Vacuum-Packed: Problem-Solving Squeezes Out Storytelling in The Martian
The Martian / directed by Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott’s latest film,The Martian, is a wholesome packet of can-do sustenance, like one of those freeze-dried, vacuum-packed Salisbury steaks on which lonesome astronauts chow down. To the late David Bowie’s question, Is there life on Mars?, the film shouts out a resounding, Yes! - and like the claustrophobically anthropocentric Interstellar, the answer is a narcissistically reassuring one - life on Mars is us, goddam it!
Beset by doubt but never by despair, Matt Damon’s Mark Watney is a can-do Caruso marooned in the Martian desert when his fellow astronauts blast off to avoid a dangerous wind storm. They think he’s dead; but though he may be down, Mark is hardly out. Sloughing himself out of a sand dune the next day and bandaging his wounds, Mark sets about figuring out how to survive until NASA susses he’s still alive and sends a rescue mission. The astronaut’s resourcefulness in figuring out what to do is the heart of the film. But his heroic and ingenious efforts to survive - the most dramatic being the creation of an indoor nursery to grow potatoes using his own feces, a knowledge of chemistry, and a wooden crucifix, like some devil-worshipping hippie version of McGyver - play like a series of exotic home repair videos, complete with a charming and cheerful host. Setbacks happen, but are generally trod underfoot by that resilient, can-do attitude. Entertaining? Sure. Gripping? That, mon ami, is a less certain proposition.
Meanwhile, the pointy-heads back at NASA are no slouches, either, and at some point they figure out that Watney is still alive. This entails - you guessed it - an entire new round of problem-solving: how will they communicate with him, given his busted gear? How will they get food to him? How, for Pete’s sake, will they RESCUE him? There’s a limp gesture or two at the uppity-ups weighing the pros and cons of what to do and what to tell the public, but really, it’s all pretty much for show. Honesty is the best policy, and OF COURSE they’re going to rescue his tater-chomping ass, not to mention send him some replacement ketchup ASAP (OK, the ketchup is never specified, but surely it is among the supply packs they put together)! As they brainstormand otherwise pull together to save Watney, those back on Earth encounter their own setbacks, which they meet with resilience, grace, and the can-do attitude that pulses like the spirit of America through every reel of this film. The Martian is simply chock full of scenes of nerdy guys having lightbulb flash moments, which is great for the beleaguered (but ever resilient and patient!) Watney, but maybe not so much for the movie’s ability to avoid a certain didactic quality.
I’ve joked about Mark’s efforts to pull himself up by his moonbootstraps, but certainly Damon is charming as the titular Martian. He’s like a grown-up Boy Scout on the shittiest expedition gone south ever (though you will wait in vain for a scene in which he toasts Martian-mallows over a campfire); he pulls us into visceral sympathy with a plight that’s recognizable but also alien and abstract. Though I obviously would have preferred a more psychologically fraught experience to be portrayed, Damon effectively communicates a man who tries his damnedest to survive but who also achieves a certain peace with himself, and the universe, in case he doesn’t.
With its single-minded focus on rescuing Mark Watney, the film curiously elides the wonderment of the fact that men and women are actually exploring Mars. The landscapes are striking and beautiful, but it is man versus nature here, and there’s no talk of looking for life on Mars apart from Watney’s increasingly scrawny tuckus. It’s all engineering and escape velocity and jerry-rigged plans to make everything work just when it’s all falling apart; perhaps a realistic view of the mechanics and organization required for space travel, but less so for persuasive human drama. If Interstellar went too far in abstract and pretentious directions while also maintaining a dizzyingly arrogant view of man’s place in the universe, The Martian is its more technically-obsessed counterpart, getting a bit lost in the mechanics of it all. A good film for recruiting future aeronautical engineers, sure, but it hums along like a well-oiled machine, not a stimulating work of art. At times, I found myself longing for an impossible tone change, with Watney forced to fight off attacking alien hordes, or even a single malignant enemy hidden in those red shifting sands. Surely, the videos he takes of himself alone on Mars offer plenty of moments for a random alien to intrude, frame left. But alas, Watney is the only Martian, as far as the longing eye ever sees.