Watching, conversing and writing about film has been a hobby of mine for a long while. Ever since I first graced the screens, which was a re-release of Lady and the Tramp back in the 80’s, I have been drawn to the allure of this mode of storytelling. This unique artform.
Over the years this has taken on different shapes and identities, notably when discourse started to shift towards online film communities, in an age where suddenly everyone was becoming a film critic. Which of course led to it’s own sort of hiearchal devleopments via blogspaces and sites and named brands and subscriber based identities.
One thing I have noted about this breave new world full of “film critics” is the tendency for many of these voices to exhbiit a deep felt need to capture and preserve the unique or original and subsequently unbiased thought. To pen a review amongst the endless many that can emerge from outside of the larger conversation. To write their thoughts apart from reading any other reviews, ratings, or trailers. This is something I see represented a lot in the online sphere, to the point where it has become a virtue.
I don’t have the same skills or presence as many of these writers. My hobby has seen my participation ebb and flow through different communities, but always as a participant. I do however spend a lot of time writing, thinking, reflecting when it comes to film. And on that front there are two distinct ways in which I tend to operate differently from others. First, I write mainly about the conversations I am seeing and hearing. I am not concerned about bias’ or having my thoughts stand on their own. I am primarily concerned with capturing and observing and reflecting on the larger conversations and what that says.
Second, if someone has taken the time to write their thoughts, I genuinely take the time to read them. I have a number of people I follow, all people who also do this as a hobby, and it is a value of mine, even if they never know it or realize it, to invest my time in reading what they have to say. And whenever I am speaking about a film, pondering a film, it is always in relationship to the larger conversation that flows from that. Rather than seek that pure, unbiased thought, what I write is interacting with that collective experience.
Which brings me to the topic at hand- the buzzy new film Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. A movie that has been in the headlines for a good while now prior to its wide release this weekend (March 19th), utilizing a slow rollout featuring multiple early screenings, which subsequently drummed up some exceptional buzz. Maybe too much, as the allusion to perfection is a hard expectation to live up to, but neverthless proving not to be a deterant at the box office thus far, given an 80 million domestic opening and an added 60 million globally (for a $140 million opening weekend).
What makes Project Hail Mary a bit unique is the fact that it is an Amazon-MGM film, being recognized as their first legitimate box office hit, and it just happens to be an original film. This comes at a time when the WB merger has been the key topic of conversation, especially when it comes to the relationship between streamer and theatrical. Once you bring in Universal’s recent announcement about doubling down on their commitment to theaters (setting aside their contract with Netflix), this can be seen as good news.
I do want to be clear, however. Any time we are talking about an “event” type movie, original or not, we must also be asking the question of how this is contributing to the whole. In a healthy theatrical environment, the success of Project Hail Mary (and given how things tend to go with headlines these days, it’s $200 million dollar budget could be the click-bait articles need to be talking about how it’s a box office failure next week) is marked by the success of (to throw a few current titles out for measure) the smaller budget Canadian films Undertone and Maya and Amar, the Korean indie The King’s Warden, the popular level horror film Ready or Not 2, the mid budget romance Reminders of Him, Stewarts debut The Chronology of Water, and original animated films GOAT and Hoppers.
There is another facet of this conversation surrounding Project Hail Mary that interests me however. In an age where it’s near impossible to know when and why a film is going to be successful (citing the old mantra “make good films and they will come” simply isn’t a consisent truism), it’s always worthwhile unpacking a cultural moment, which I think this film qualifies as. Sure, there’s the fact that the film’s source material has a significant following, aided by the arguable appearance of an adaptation that treats the source material with the respect certain auidiences might demand (relatively speaking of course)
I think there’s more lurking behind the surface though. It doesn’t take much perusing of the larger conversation to note a common motif in people’s reactions to this film. One word that seems to rise above the rest is “hopeful.” It’s a movie being released in the seemingly most dire of moments, paricularly in America but also on a global level, which dares to imagine that people are good and things are going to be alright. And in many respects it would seem people want that story right now. Perhaps need that story.
It’s worth noting as well that this is not an accident. If you have listened to interviews with the author, who also serves as producer on the film, this is what he set out to do with the source material. Having previously written a story with an unlikeable protagonist that he describes as not being recieved well, he set out to craft a character readers could and would root for. Flawed yes, but only in a humanizing sense, not in a qualifying sense. You can see this in the repeated refrains that emerge within both book and film where the protagonist, who’s once potential of an illustrious career in the sciences has resulted in a modestly payed teaching role, struggles with his feelings of fear and self doubt even in the face of of other’s belief in him. It’s a feel good story through and through, giving people someone to root for. Someone who, in many respects, might remind us of ourselves.
The author, Andy Weir, is someone with a great interest in the sciences, even as he continues to direct that towards his creative works. When it comes to the stories he writes, he has spoken publicly about seeing the world from the perpsective of a positivist (defined as a philosophical system that rejects metephysical authority in favour of a sturdied empiracal rationionalism, and noted by it’s unwavering belief in the myth of progress, a narrative that upholds commitments to humanity’s goodness and it’s ability to control and bring about a better world). From this lens, his stories reflect a belief that we are presently in the best of all possible world’s given the relative placement within the historical timeline. Meaning, he appeals to those like Pinker whom argue that while people are naturally given to despair, when we look at our history we have never lived in a less violent, more prosperous time (not withstanding actually defining those terms).
How does this play out in Project Hail Mary? We have the everyman’s quirky quasi-hero who defies the odds by appealing to humanity’s greatest traits and bringing about hope for the future, all while being surrounded by people who believe fervently in this humanistic endeavor, and all in the name of humanity’s greatest achievement- science- of course.
In other words, the quintessential story of modernism. The enlightenment blueprint.
Here’s where I would throw my own observations into the mix. It doesn’t surpise me that this narrative is appealing to the masses. In many ways it could be argued that this prototype is appealing to one of storytelling’s greatest draws- nostalgia. Not unlike the recent Train Dreams, this is a story that on the surface seems to be and appears to be speaking to an imagined “better” future, but really what it is doing is pulling from that common mythic foundation that once promised us the greatest of all possible worlds made in our own image.
And, much lke Train Dreams, embedded in this is that subtle allegiance to America’s place as both the pinacale of this story and its preservation. As the feeling goes, when America loses it’s way, the world self destructs, at least from this point of view. Yes, there’s a bit of irony to the fact that Gosling has never looked or felt more Canadian on screen, but the fact that the hero of this story, surrounded by a global presence taking on a worldwide threat, is the token American. The fact that this same story could be told from any other national POV and have a different hero at it’s center might feel and seem obvious, but I would argue that it is something many nviewers have missed. And it matters to where we find the hope being represented in this film.
I read the book for the first time this past month in preparation for seeing the film. One of the things I noted in my review was my frustration with the fact that the book stays so firmly on the surface of it’s premise. Instead of using the science as a way to dig underneath the bigger questions regarding the motivations of it’s characters and the why of their actions and their struggles and the subsequent questions of meaning this evokes, it trades that for a heavy emphasis on expostion and, reduces it’s world to it’s mechanics, a world it can control and thus save. Very little (to no) time is spent actually fleshing out the necessary existential crisis (token positivist tendency by the way).
The movie in many ways corrects this. Where the book’s exposition overtook the narrative, here the characters themselves are brought to the forefront, filling in the gaps with an emotional intelligence instead of simply the head knowledge represented in the book. It’s a welcome change for me personally, and one that actually functions in a somewhat antiethical way to the arc in the novel, although given what I’ve found in much of the online discourse I think people are equally unaware of the implications. For me this represents something of a curious cognitive disonnance.
This simple change in the arc stems from where we locate the central character’s growth and transformation. If the book imagines the hope stemming from the protagonist’s solving of the puzzle which is the physical laws in question (which coincidentally is described as having superior knowledge to the alien species that informs the relational component of the story, something which visually translates through a particular striking scene involving the American “teacher” for the subtle but glaring assumptions it does make), lingering in the subtext of the film is this quiet concession that such knowledge alone isn’t enough to make sense of the state of the living world. Here we see a different “myth” breaking through the walls of it’s modernist rhetoric, leading the viewer to see the true hope in the narrative patterns driving the protagonist’s choices. These patterns express themselves in the language of sacrifice. More importantly though, such a myth is not rooted in the human accomplishment. Rather, it is a pattern that life, or the living, is responding to. It’s a story and reality that breaks in from the outside.
For me, the true revelation that Project Hail Mary “apocalypses” into our midst, which might actually be acting in spite of it’s own intentions, is not the glory of the human enterprise, it is not trusting in the myth of progress, it’s not the need to champion american exceptionalism, nor is it the materiliasm that undergirds the virtues of our species capacity to “survive” against all odds. The true revelation arrives as a message that actually critiques these things as being built on a false and wrong foundation. It gives allegiance to a different way of seeing, being and participating in the world. It reveals a pattern that makes sense not of how we survive or how we can control and master this physical world, but of how we respond to the counter-intuitive nature of the lived in world that we actually find. How we participate in it by way of patterns that can both name the problem and transform it according to a greater Truth.
What struck me walking out of the film, especially having spent some time immersed in that larger conversation, is that even where we are taught a different narrative through the systems of this world, this contrary pattern can’t help but emerge as it’s own voice of critique and redemption. Reminds me of Tolkien and Lewis’ approach to the True myth that makes sense of all the world’s stories. For them this is what compelled them ultimately towards the story of Christ. Somehow and in someway, this patterned way of living, this breaking in of the sacrificial narrative, put all the pieces in place for understanding the mythic shape of history itself. It gave them a way of understanding the Darknness and the Light, precisely because it makes sense of what we find in the realm of the living. It makes sense of what we resist, and what ultimately provides our way forwad out of the mess. That Christ plays this out on a cosmic level is simply the touchpoint of history’s own intuition.
If we see this as a story seeking to reclaim the forgotten allure of the Enlightenment narrative in a time of crisis, we will only be left chasing after this story’s repeated illusion. It might feel hopeful, but that hope can never be rooted in anything true. If we see this as that universal pattern breaking into our present, that hope suddenly has a Life of it’s own. It can genuinely say, despite the cycles of history bearing itself out in the throes our present moment, there are patterns pointing us to a greater Truth.
The Stories of my Life 