STELLAR SUCCESS

MOVIE
The Martian
Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain
Director Ridley Scott
Review Ray Chan

The audience has barely time to get comfortable in their seats before being thrust into the meat of the movie, as US astronaut/researcher Mark Watney (Damon) gets left stranded on Mars after a mission goes awry.

    But that’s just fine, as the set-up saves on a lot of potentially pointless exposition, allowing the tale to pan out briskly, achieving a balance between humour and seriousness, as the unflappable Watney dreams up ways of returning to Earth.

    Damon is shouldered with holding most of the action on his own, and he does a first-rate job of it, his performance hitting all of the emotional beats with just the right amount of gravity (pun intended).

    He delivers a truly moving performance, and viewers can’t help but root for him as he calmly devises various solutions to escape his predicament.

    Drew Goddard’s screenplay does an admirable job of making the science jargon undemanding and digestible, while the light-hearted moments make for a welcome departure from the norm for Ridley Scott, whose dour over-seriousness has made many of his pictures a bore.

    Easily Scott’s best for years, The Martian is gloriously shot with grand landscape shots of the red planet, and the fusion between practical and CG effects is photorealistically impressive.

    Although the adventure takes place in an unspecified future, Goddard makes sure Watney’s plan for surviving in an environment with no breathable atmosphere nor potable water is not addled by pseudo-scientific commentary.

    In voice-over and video diaries, Watney articulates the process of cataloguing his remaining food, creating water from rocket fuel, and using the crew’s faecal waste to fertilise rows of potatoes in the Mars space station.

    He also dismantles various pieces of equipment to attempt contact with Earth and learns that Vicodin makes a decent substitute for ketchup, while getting irritated at the amount of disco music someone programmed into the computers.

    The Martian is a film about powering on in burdensome situations, and delivers a compelling message about perseverance and fortitude in the face of depressing odds.

    It’s an inspiringly unapologetic tribute to resourcefulness and ingenuity, and helping it go down easier is undeniably Damon’s everyman personality.
    This is hardly Jason Bourne on Mars; it’s Damon as the very embodiment of American can-do spirit at its best.

#themartian