Project Hail Mary – Astrophage can’t stop Cinema
How much empathy do you have for a rock? I sometimes start these blog posts with a silly question, but this one, you might be thinking, must be craziest of them all… Well had you asked me this before I saw Project Hail Mary I would have thought so too, but now, I know my feelings for rocks, well at least space rocks, go much deeper!
Adapted from the book of the same title by Andy Weir (author of The Martian), Project Hail Mary is a new sci-fi film starring Ryan Gosling. Ryland Grace is a science teacher who wakes up alone in a spaceship, tasked with saving humanity – a tiny catch, however, he can’t remember anything… The narrative is told in a parallel between the past on earth, and the present in space, as Grace starts to remember. With him, we find out that a mysterious substance – astrophage – has accumulated around Venus and is causing the sun to die. As the mission details unravel, we are left to wonder why we left the whole of the human species at the hands of a goofy, albeit incredibly smart and ingenious, schoolteacher. All hope is not lost, though, as Grace might not be alone after all…
With the same comedic tone that Weir has gotten his audience used to, Project Hail Mary traverses not only space, but also a wide range of emotions, making the audience at the edge of their seat, laughing and, more than once, crying. Ryan Gosling does a truly fantastic job in a performance that reminds the audience of his character Holland March in The Nice Guys. However, his brilliance is not alone, as the films counts with the amazing puppeteer James Ortiz ’10 as Rocky, the fantastic cinematography of Greig Fraser, and an astonishing soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton (I have to recommend you listen to the song A Moment, if you have one to spare!)
At a time when streaming is taking over, leaving many, to wonder about the future of cinema, Project Hail Mary comes out to prove that we, the audience, are still craving original characters and stories. And if astrophage starts threatening to eat the light of film projectors, in favour of home screens, we will gather stronger than ever in cinema rooms to stop it. This week, the Dukes will be screening what was, for this writer, the most enjoyable science fiction film since Interstellar, and I can’t wait for you to watch it, and to meet (and fall in love with) Rocky!
Written by João Eduardo Lima Belchior
