New releases: Project Hail Mary, No Tears on the Field

Project Hail Mary presents quite the para­dox. There’s so much going on with it that I felt like it could sus­tain not only one long pod­cast epis­ode but sev­er­al¹ – not that I’m in the mood to return to Rancho Notorious just yet – but that all the rich pick­ings for con­ver­sa­tion nev­er quite added up to a film that could love.

The editor-in-chief and I were tex­ting back­wards and for­wards all day Friday with thoughts, ideas and obser­va­tions and I can­’t say that has happened too often recently after a night at the cinema, but I was­n’t emo­tion­ally moved by it the way I was by the films that inspired it.

Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running is a found­a­tion text for me and I’m still des­troyed whenev­er I see the three little robots, Huey, Dewey and Louie, going about their lonely con­ser­va­tion busi­ness as their ship dis­ap­pears off into out­er space. The char­ac­ter of the ali­en Rocky in Project Hail Mary serves a sim­il­ar pur­pose – self­less cute­ness – but I nev­er got the sense that he was really in mor­tal² danger or that his des­per­ate sac­ri­fices might be per­man­ent. It’s not that kind of film. It has themes of loneli­ness, ali­en­a­tion³ and self-discovery, but an uplift­ing end­ing is nev­er really in doubt.

Even the exist­en­tial ele­ment­al crisis facing human­ity isn’t caused by any­thing we’ve done down here on Earth. A spe­cies of tiny organ­isms feed­ing off – and there­fore depriving the galaxy of – star­light is just rot­ten luck and the glob­al con­glom­er­ate of space agen­cies tasked with find­ing the solu­tion appears – des­pite boss Sandra Hüller’s lack of faith in human­ity’s abil­ity to coöper­ate – to be com­ing togeth­er productively.

Ryan Gosling is a ‘seat of the pants’ micro­bi­o­lo­gist, houn­ded out of respect­able sci­ence for hav­ing the temer­ity to pos­it that life does not require hydro­gen and oxy­gen, now teach­ing at a middle school and attempt­ing to sug­ar coat the bad news about sun­light to impres­sion­able young­sters. Turns out the box is thing we need to be think­ing out­side of and he is draf­ted in to help work out what these little crit­ters are and how they can be stopped before the lights go out all over the galaxy.

The film takes a little while to get to that, how­ever, as it fol­lows the struc­ture of Andy Weir’s nov­el by back­wardsing and for­wardsing as Gosling’s char­ac­ter recov­ers from space-induced amne­sia. When we meet him, he’s wak­ing up from cryo­sleep to dis­cov­er that he’s the only sur­viv­or of an 11-light-year jour­ney to a star that appears to hold the key to our fate. We – like he – are dropped right in it.

Before he can get his bear­ings, he sees anoth­er ves­sel out of his porthole and comes to dis­cov­er that his exper­i­ence is mirrored by an ali­en – also on the same mis­sion and also alone due to the death of his crew mem­bers – and the two of them have to learn how to work togeth­er if their mis­sion is to be suc­cess­ful. An inter­stel­lar bromance ensues – charm­ing and funny thanks to a typ­ic­ally goofy per­form­ance from Gosling and some out­stand­ing pup­pet char­ac­ter work from the gif­ted James Ortiz.

A crowd-pleasing, inspir­ing, smart and deli­ciously detailed film, Project Hail Mary deserves to make a ton of money – mainly because when the final pieces drop into place at the end you’ll want to go back and buy a second tick­et straight away to enjoy how writer Drew Goddard and dir­ect­ors Lord & Miller put it all together..

No Tears on the Field is a loc­al doc­u­ment­ary about the world of pro­vin­cial women’s rugby – a top­ic already rendered into drama by David Geary’s Pack of Girls in 1991. The nov­elty is there­fore long gone and the suc­cesses of our élite play­ers mean the pro­file of the sport is as high as it has ever been.

Where Lisa Burd’s film shines is in the cast­ing. Focusing on Taranaki club rugby she has found some bril­liant char­ac­ters even if a lot of the drama in their lives has already happened by the time she arrives with her cam­era. I’m not con­vinced that the final product jus­ti­fies the price of a movie tick­et but I’m glad that these women are hav­ing their stor­ies told.

Further listening (and watching)

I barely scratched the sur­face of Project Hail Mary with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights on Friday and we also spoke about Star Wars Skeleton Crew (Disney+) and this delight­ful YouTube video which was made by com­bin­ing hun­dreds of high res­ol­u­tion pho­tos taken by astro­naut Loral O’Hara from the International Space Station turned into a slow and med­it­at­ive jour­ney across North America.

It was also my rostered appear­ance on RNZ’s Culture 101 on Sunday after­noon and I reviewed No Tears on the Field as well as I Swear and Hoppers, which I will write up here next week when they get their prop­er cinema release.

1. I’d love to talk to some­body for an hour or more about the geni­us of cast­ing Sandra Hüller and how she isn’t ((just) there because she’s an Oscar-nominated act­ress lend­ing grav­itas to a block­buster. She brings some­thing uniquely Hüller to the char­ac­ter of Stratt, mak­ing someone that does­n’t have much to say on the page as rich and com­plex as any of her most fam­ous roles. I lit­er­ally can­’t ima­gine any­one else in the part. ↩︎
2. I know, I know – “mor­tal danger”. ↩︎
3. I know, I know – “ali­enation”. ↩︎