火星救援（影评）

The Martian

To tell the truth (Okay, time to confess), I've been thinking about writing this review of this "Great!" movie for quite a while, ever since the moment I watched the astonishing scene (when the hero, Walt Whitney, played by Matt Damon, operates himself to get out the dreadful chip). However, being a victim of occasional “procrastination”, it took me quite a long time to accumulate enough resolutions and put down these words till now. And please forgive me for this is my first time to write a review for a film, as well as in English. I believe that anyone who ever felt a “urge” to write down their feelings and ideas impulsively may understand both the excitement as well as the fear which are flooding in my chest right now.

Okay, enough for those blah and let’s get to the business. Why do I decide to write this review? Well, to begin with, it was a quiet winter evening in my dorm and I was planning to watch a movie while wiping my shoes (sorry for being so vivid). When the break-taking scene I’ve mentioned above appeared on the screen, I just couldn’t help putting down my chores and randomly grabbing a small notebook to put down the “questions” that are pouring in my mind along with the plot development. But, first and foremost: why choosing the Mars?

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The answer is both (seemingly) obvious and equivocal. On one hand, our fantasies about the Mars and the “Martian” started almost the same time when the agnostic "barrier/taboo" was tore down by the fearless pioneers of modern astronomy, such as Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and so on. One feature that distinguishes our feelings for the Mars with the rest of planets is that those “speculations/rumors” about the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence there (AKA, the Martian) are often brought by the astronomers themselves, rather than those 'uninformed' laymen. Dating back to 1877, an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli observed the Mars, using his homemade primordial telescope, and he saw some images of crossing lines which he related to the canal on our Earth. Ever since then, rumors/conjectures about the Martian have been passing through generations, in the form of science fictions, films and even some delusional/jaw-dropping “news” reports (every once in a while, we’d read some “eye-catching” news released by the NASA; perhaps the most stunning story featuring a Russian boy, Boriska, who claimed himself a descendant from the Mars: https://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/doc_view/39-boriska-indigo-boy-from-mars). But, on the other hand, given those long historical fantasies regarding this familiar yet mysterious planet, it is indeed a real challenging job to produce ‘another’ film about the Mars: because as far as I’m concerned (and I believe many may share the same idea with me), that there exists an invisible ‘ceiling’ for any novel or film that attempts to catch the audience’s attention as much as they wish for, without stepping out of our status quo technology (exoterically, without creating a ‘Super-man’ or ‘X-man’ kind of ‘savior’ to defeat the ‘undefeatable’).

But, this time, much to our surprise ex post (I’ll explain later), the film makers (including the director, actors and actresses, the original play writer and etc.) succeed in breaking this ‘limit-of-ceiling’ and brought the audience into a world that is both visually and philosophically provoking! Unlike the stereotype Hollywood-style of ‘creating the Super Heroes’, the 'hero' here is not that ‘too-good-to-be-true’ type of character; instead, this astronaut also botanist, Mark Waltney, acted in a way that leads the audience to an adventure, a journey that constantly tests our limits of survival, at the same time exploring the ‘bottom-line’ question: the meaning of ‘being’, from quite a new perspective or a context that seems too unrealistic at first, yet soon makes the audience feel like it could or even ‘did’ happen yesterday…

From the internet, subject to the original copyright.

So far, I haven’t attempted to address this film from religious perspective of human being. Yet, it is by no means a negligible part of the main takeaways which I believe, the playwright/director wanted to deliver. For instance, one of the hints comes from the scene where Mark Waltney tries to produce water that is desperately needed for irrigation, by lighting the wooden chips that he chopped from the ‘holy cross’. Although they used a quite humorous way to approach this area, as for our audience, it would be too crude and careless to go on with the plot without any kind of reflecting ‘what is lurking in the background’ question, i.e., what kind of power or religious belief that helped him got through all these incredible troubles that are unprecedented to our mankind, as of today and the near future?

One simple and straight-forward answer, in a reasonable sense, I guess, is that his belief in science (e.g. ‘the scientific spirit’) has done a major role of providing support and strength to overcome all these unimaginable obstacles. Nevertheless, keep in mind of the claim that I’ve put forward in the prior paragraph that the playwright/director did not intend to produce a character of ‘super-hero’ (or the ‘overman’, in Nietzsche’s terminology). Also, it would be too bold to reckon that in the environment where what you see, hear and touch is completely opposite from the Earth, our home planet, and where any prior concept or knowledge about “living a life” is virtually out-of-context, a person, who comes from modern human society, would have zero moment of hesitation or the idea of “this is it, I’m giving up” (or even suicidal idea). We can find similar scenarios in the movie Cast Away or Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Yet, compared with those post-Renaissance works, this film succeeds a lot in convincing the audience of the realism of this fictional world, both physically (via the astonishing depiction of the landscape on Mars ) and psychologically (via the nice pace and great performance of the cast)!

From the internet, subject to the original copyright.

Yet, till now, I have to admit that I still could not provide a convincing answer, regarding the spiritual force of this incidental ‘expat’ on Mars. Though, there are still many clues, from which I suggest our audience could make their conjectures for this 'ultimate' puzzle. For instance, the shocking strength of survival instinct during his brutal self-rescue, the weeping scene of re-building connections to the Earth, the kinda pigeon-holed humor charisma of the hero and even his ‘lunatic’ behaviors towards the end…

Meanwhile, I’d turn my focus back to this ‘cliché’ yet still intriguing discussion that “Is it worth to rescue a single person while endangering the life of the more?”. I believe many audience can recall such dilemmas in prior Hollywood blockbusters, such as ‘Saving Private Ryan (1998)’ and ‘Starship Troopers (1997)’. Nevertheless, this time, the dilemma has been lifted to a whole new level: every decision that they are going to make has almost zero prior reference yet also huge ‘sunk costs’ in terms of survival probability and time. Also, this time, in the beginning of the 21st century, where the globalization has reached to the point that ‘problem-solving’ could be operated literally at the international level, thanks to the Internet, super computers and programmers; hence, at the near end of the movie, we saw this seemingly familiar scene where people gathering at Times Square, Trafalgar Square and other major landmarks around the world, waiting anxiously for the updates of this ‘extraterrestrial’ rescue mission. From their worrying faces, you can even feel that their nerves, breaths as well as that of yours, that are synchronized so closely and the tension is so overwhelming. When the final news arrives, reporting that our ‘hero’ has been safely rescued, the bursting joy (which is beyond my current ability of depicting) all exploding at once, across people, regardless of their social status, race, nationality, age, education…anything that used to isolate or label us: social, economical, political or religious backgrounds, all those ‘artificial’ barriers are gone. At this moment, we only share the same ‘label’: human-being, the word which is so ordinary that we’ve taken it for granted for so long that in most of times in our history, we only notice those differences that are used as the ‘declaration’ or ‘excuse’ for conflicts and even wars.

Unlike those seemingly alike scenes from the so-called ‘disaster’ movies, this time, we are not faced with the threat of ‘alien’ invasions, neither do we encounter some unprecedented tsunamis or earthquakes; instead, we are just solving a difficult problem which is mostly caused by ourselves, the mankind, in the first place (Ironical, isn’t it?). Even so, this ‘hypothetical’ moment seems so realistic that we can even relate back to those historical moments, for example, the moment when the Second World War was declared to be over (remember the famous photo of the kissing between an American soldier and a young girl, yet of which the authenticity is under suspicion), the moment when Neil Armstrong set his foot print on the Moon (coincidentally, this is also consistently under great deal of suspicion) and stated his famous sentence. Then why is this fiction-based plot parallel to those monumental moments? To me, the answer is much more simple and straight forward (compared with the prior one): only during those moments, we, us, the mankind, are united as the same ethnic; only in those cases, we are unanimously joyful and happy about the same achievement, a fact that reveals the ‘ultimate’ yet rarely fulfilled truth: justice will conquer the evil and solidarity will overcome any difficulty!; and only at those events, we truly feel both the pride and blessing of being a human, a creature that has the power to build civilization and be aware of the unknown and limits of our knowledge and experience (this film is definitely a good example of that).

From the internet, subject to the original copyright.

In the end, I’d like to discuss a few ‘minor’ or less intense issues related to the film, some anecdotes or ‘behind-the-scene’ stuffs. The first that comes to my mind is that for this year’s Golden Globe Award (hosted by Hollywood Foreign Press Association, abbr. as HFPA), 'The Martian’ was nominated as the ‘comedy’ film. Obviously, it has raised quite a debate among audience as well as academia in film industry. Let’s just take a look at the definition of ‘comedy’ from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as well as the Entry Forms and Award Rules of the Golden Globe Awards. The former one states the following, “... a drama of light and amusing character and typically with a happy ending...” or more specifically “...a play, movie, television program, novel, etc., that is meant to make people laugh”. Yet, the ‘definition’ on the website of the Golden Globe Awards for the category of ‘Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy” is quite blurred, only states the inclusive condition: “....for example, dramas with comedic overtones should be entered as dramas”. Then, based on the ‘definition’ of the HFPA, 'The Martian' should be categorized as the ‘Drama’. Though, the HFPA is notorious for its messy and confusing categorization tradition (see, e.g., Jeremy Gottlieb’s comments on Uproxx.com and Mark Hughes’s long discussion on Quora.com:https://www.quora.com/What-makes-The-Martian-a-comedy-instead-of-another-category).

The underlying reason for this debate, to me, is the product of this long-existing prejudice against comedies, which usually view them as a ‘tool’ of killing time in a mind-free state and therefore much inferior compared with dramas. From my point of view, as long as it can reach to the bottom (or at least the edge) of the audience’s heart, then it is a decent art work. Unlike the recent popular novel series: The Three-Body, by Liu Cixi, which is more philosophical, the film is like an elegant mixture of grasp-taking humanity issues and the Matt Damon-style sketch, which certainly guarantees it to be a popular topic in today’s U.S. mainstream society. To wrap up all my rambling thoughts about the movie, I’d like to quote one paragraph of monologue from the leading character: "... It's space. It doesn't cooperate. I guarantee you that at some point, everything's going to go south on you. You're going to say, 'This is it. This is how I end.' Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work."

The End

Oct., 2017.

Alec Yi @ Pao Yue-Kong Library, Hong Kong PolyU.

From the internet, subject to the original copyright.