There are many things that Hollywood loves, but chief among them surely must be an inspirational story about a brave and capable hero who takes on impossible odds and succeeds.
It’s a theme that crops up again and again in a myriad of film genres, and generally garners the makers of the films in question some genuinely fierce award-loving.
What is rare in films like this, and Ridley Scott’s The Martian, on the surface at least sits, squarely among their number, is a sense of authentic struggle, of genuinely-moving emotion that affects you even though you are reasonably where the film is going to narratively end up.
This is not to say that other films of this kind aren’t genuine in their intentions; rather that they wear their hearts rather too manipulatively on their sleeves, and you almost feel a sense of obligation, no matter how worthy or well made the film, to react as directed.
The Martian on the other hand, based on the book by Andy Weir, manages to remain an emotional breed apart, redolent with an epic struggle against the odds that never feels overdone or melodramatic, but rather as authentic as a film can feel about a pioneering astronaut stuck on Mars when the rest of his team are forced to abandon the planet during a cataclysmic storm.
We see Mark Watney, played with wisecracking good humour and determination by Matt Damon at the top of his game, run the gamut of all too human reactions to a situation that has never been faced by anyone ever before.
His predicament, as he sagely notes, is the first of many firsts, with no manual to play to, no easy answers to access, and most importantly, no easy help within reach.
Earth, and the NASA brains trust which got him there in the first place, are 50 million miles away, his crew are speeding away from him on a 10 month journey home, which is technically not reversible, and his supplies, which includes enough food for only about 400 Sol days, which equates to a little over 24 Earth hours.
At any point, his habitat could rupture, with survival in the harsh, inimical to life Martian atmosphere counted in the seconds, not minutes or hours, and the water and oxygen reclamation apparatus could run out.
And that’s only the start of a fairly daunting list of things that could go wrong.
“Space,” Watney notes, “does not cooperate” with humanity’s agendas, leaving the intrepid botanist no option but to “science the shit out of this.”
And science the shit out of it he does, rigging up a greenhouse to grow potatoes to supplement his diet, doctoring the rover designed to travel only 35 miles at a pop into a transport juggernaut that can traverse the 3200 miles to where help may lie when the next mission arrives (providing he can survive the four years until they arrive) and figuring out a way to communicate with NASA via outmoded ’90s tech in the form of the outmoded Pathfinder probe.
While it may have a hint of MacGyver to it all, it never devolves into some gimmicky plot device, thanks a script that bends rather than breaks scientific knowhow – there have been accusations that the film is not wholly scientifically accurate which ignores the fact that the film is a suspension of belief entertainment, not a documentary -and Damon’s ability to infuse Watney with a gungho spirit, borne not of arrogant self-belief but a desperate will to survive.
This is a man who knows his back is against the wall, and who is never allowed to forget thanks to an unforgiving environment that never relents for a second.
Even with NASA working hard to bring him down, the world watching and his crew contemplating what they can do to help him, his is always a solo struggles against impossible odds, faced with a vulnerability that never assumes success is a given.
It helps, of course, Watney is a man of mischievous wit, able to see the humour, and comment rather articulately on it, in pretty every situation he comes across.
It doesn’t mean he takes anything glibly – for all the wisecracks and vibrant disco music soundtrack (with ABBA’s “Waterloo” thrown in for good measure), both Scott’s direction and the assured, beautifully-paced script by Drew Goddard keep us focused on the seriousness of the situation – but it does humanise him and lends his feats of derrringdo a sense of anyone-could-do-this believability.
Of course, not everyone could, but the film doesn’t belabour that point, choosing to elevate Watney as a learned, educated man who employs every last things he knows in a ceaseless battle to survive.
What makes his engrossing tale so damn watchable, and emotionally moving in a way so many films of its kind fail to muster, quite apart from Damon’s masterful performance, is that it doesn’t treat anything as a foregone conclusion.
Sure we might think we know where it’s going but again and again, we’re reminded, that we, and Watney, can’t take anything for granted.
That approach results in a film that defies all expectation in terms of emotional reactions; you may walk in thinking you’ve seen it all before, and to a certain extent you have, but so well directed, scripted and acted is the film that all these pieces fit together to form a whole far more moving and original than its parts.
So successful is it in this endeavour that scenes of hundreds of thousands of people watching worldwide as NASA and Watney battle to bring him home,and the tense, break-all-the-rules behind-the-scenes machinations within NASA itself, are genuinely riveting viewing, ripe with all the deeply affecting emotion you could wish for.
Sure we’ve seen much of it before but not like this, not filled with this much raw, authentic, genuine every person emotion (and winning humour), and it means The Martian, and particularly its epic finale, is uplifting and inspiring in ways you may not expect as you enter the theatre.