Susan Granger’s review of “Spaceman” (Netflix)
Stand-up comic Adam Sandler established his screen career in broad, slapstick comedies. But in 2019, he stunned audiences by playing a desperate New York City jeweler on the lookout for the ultimate win in “Uncut Gems.”
Now in “Spaceman,” he’s Jakub Prochazka, a weary, bearded Czechoslovakian astronaut who is six months into a solo mission to explore and retrieve particle samples from a huge purple nebula known as the Chopra Cloud, located near the outer limits of Jupiter.
Yet his research mission is minor in comparison with his concern about the dissolution of his marriage to pregnant Lenka (Carey Mulligan), who resents his ego, ambition and commitment to space travel. (Didn’t she know that when she married him?)
When she sends him a video message announcing that she’s leaving him, it’s intercepted by Jakub’s deeply concerned Euro Space Program boss, Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), who refuses to pass it on, psrtiularly since a competitive South Korean spaceship is following close behind.
She knows Jakub is already in emotional distress, searching for some kind of redemption for the sins of his disgraced father, an informant for the Communist Party, but the narrative almost obliterates that political connection.
Meanwhile, looking in a mirror, Jakub extracts a spidery creature from his mouth…Is it a nightmare or somehow connected to his subsequent discovery of a huge, hairy arachnid, a six-eyed alien intruder, lurking on his spaceship?
Addressing him as “skinny human,” this mysterious creature (voiced by Paul Dano) quickly assures Jakub that it’s not predatory; instead, it seems to be offering soft-spoken counsel, evoking an empathetic cross between the barn spider in E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” and Stanley Kubrick’s HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Adapted by Colby Day from Jaroslav Kalfar’s 2017 novel “Spaceman of Bohemia,” it’s unevenly directed by Sweden’s Johan Renck (HBO’s “Chernobyl”), who never quite decides whether this is a melancholy marital relationship drama, an existential meditation on loneliness, or cosmic conjecture about the ability of a human to remain sane while in claustrophobic solitude.
Due to mixed reactions at test screenings, “Spaceman” has been in post-production for almost three years. On the plus side, as Max Richter’s score soars, cinematographer Jakon Ihre comes up with some stunning visuals, creating an experiential sense of zero gravity.
FYI: The little girl who inquires whether Jakub is the loneliest man in the world is actually Sandler’s real-life daughter Sunny.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Spaceman” is an ambiguous, inconsequential 4, streaming on Netflix.
