Sandler flaunts drama chops in pensive sci-fi adaptation
Much art has been made of the infinite loneliness of space travel. And how could it not? Loneliness may be a universal human condition, but what could be more isolating than being removed from the human race entirely?
So when Adam Sandler, as Czech astronaut Jakub in Johan Renck’s “Spaceman,” is asked by a young girl during a broadcast to Earth if he’s lonely, he answers in platitudes, but his eyes betray the truth. Yes, he is lonely. Very lonely.
At one point in Sandler’s career, the idea of the actor as an astronaut heading to the outskirts of Jupiter could only have signaled comedy. But we’ve seen enough great work from him in dramatic roles to know what he’s capable of, and he gives a hugely empathetic performance here.
If there’s a flaw in “Spaceman” it’s not a lack of acting heft, but a lack of story heft. Adapted from the novel “Spaceman of Bohemia” by Jaroslav Kalfar, it paints a world that should be fascinating but is often reduced to frustrating dream sequences. They’re lovely, but we’d like to know more about Jakub and his past, not to mention his relationship with wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan).
We begin halfway through Jakub’s mission. That’s 189 days since he left Lenka and Earth for a solo trip to explore a mysterious purple cloud near Jupiter. The spaceship looks late-20th century, not 2024, and certainly not futuristic.
The production design is terrific here, evoking what such an environment might look like when a guy’s been living in it for six months. There are half-consumed bottles of space food, and the toilet constantly malfunctions.
Jakub, like Elton John’s Rocket Man, misses his wife. They’ve been sending each other video messages, but hers have grown spotty. She is pregnant and angry at having been abandoned for a year. In fact, Lenka records a message telling Jakub she’s unhappy and wants to leave him.
All of which creates a huge problem for the mission, which needs a focused astronaut. The head of the Euro Space program, Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), decides Jakub won’t get to see Lenka’s message. He senses something is wrong anyway.
And then one night,
Jakub awakens with a spider crawling out from his mouth.
It’s only a dream. But soon enough, the spider appears for real, an actual, six-eyed, life-size alien. At first, Jakub thinks he’s going nuts. He tries to kill the alien with exterminating gas, but the spider explains that this won’t hurt him. He is, he recounts, on his way from his own planet, traveling through space and time. He’s voiced by Paul Dano, in a gentle tone arguably reminiscent of HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Mainly, they discuss Jakub’s marriage. At one point, the creature asks: “You have many boundaries, skinny human. Perhaps they are the cause of your loneliness?” This interplay is toggled with scenes of Lenka back home, as well as flashbacks of the genesis of the couple’s love, memories the spider forces Jakub to explore.
The spaceship approaches the cloud, a place that represents the beginning and the end, while Jakub comes to understand his love for Lenka and where that fits in the universe, too.