Space­man review – a mov­ing voy­age to the far beyond

Some­where in deep space, there is a beau­ti­ful pur­ple-pink mass of par­ti­cles and dust. It is cos­mic and mys­te­ri­ous and very, very far away, though vis­i­ble from Earth. Humans, a nat­u­ral­ly inquis­i­tive and enter­pris­ing species, are keen to under­stand the secrets of what they dub ​‘The Chopra Cloud’, but the eight-month solo mis­sion only appeals to a cer­tain type of cos­mo­naut – one who doesn’t mind being in iso­la­tion for almost a year of his life.

“They say you’re the loneli­est man in the uni­verse,” Anna, a high school­er, tells Jakub Procház­ka (Adam San­dler) dur­ing a manda­to­ry pub­lic­i­ty ses­sion. ​“Is that true?” Jakub con­sid­ers the ques­tion, and the hes­i­tant stu­dent thou­sands of miles away. He rat­tles off an answer that feels more like cor­po­rate spin than a real response, sure to include a prod­uct plug, and the benev­o­lent but busi­ness-mind­ed Com­mis­sion­er Tuma (Isabel­la Rosselli­ni) ends the ses­sion. Jakub is left alone again, sit­ting in his tin can, far above the world.

His mis­sion has tak­en him away from his preg­nant wife Lenka (Carey Mul­li­gan, a lit­tle mis­cast) who decides she’s had enough and sends her hus­band a tear­ful ​‘Dear Jakub’ video record­ing. This is swift­ly inter­cept­ed by Tuma, who fears any emo­tion­al dis­tress could jeop­ar­dise the mis­sion, and she sets about try­ing to per­suade Lenka to change her mind. Mean­while, Jakub has a vis­i­tor: a giant, extra-ter­res­tri­al spi­der, with the cau­tious curios­i­ty of a house­cat and the voice of Paul Dano.

Despite his ini­tial hor­ror, a lone­ly, weary Jakub bro­kers a ten­ta­tive peace with the crea­ture, whom he names Hanuš, after the leg­end of the mas­ter Czech clock­mak­er. He teach­es Hanuš about choco­late spread (San­dler fans may recall the scene in Lit­tle Nicky, where a talk­ing dog intro­duces the kind­heart­ed son of the dev­il to Popeye’s chick­en) and in turn, the wise Hanuš press­es Jakub to con­front his past, and the moti­va­tions he has for accept­ing the Chopra mission.

Jakub is a sort of par­al­lel to Bar­ry Egan, the social­ly awk­ward, explo­sive­ly angry pro­tag­o­nist of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, which arguably intro­duced the con­cept of Adam San­dler as a seri­ous actor to the world. Sim­i­lar­ly rid­dled with famil­ial trau­ma and an abil­i­ty to express his feel­ings, Jakub has opt­ed out of soci­ety entire­ly rather than risk rejec­tion. It’s a mode that San­dler might not get to slip into that often, but one that he han­dles with care. The low reg­is­ter of his voice, his tired eyes and his with­er­ing exchanges with Hanuš prompt the audi­ence to see San­dler in a dif­fer­ent light, free from the shack­les of a self-con­scious awards bait role, or some­thing as rous­ing – but still deeply fun­ny – as Uncut Gems.

There are moments of lev­i­ty in Space­man, but it’s a deeply melan­choly film, more Ad Astra than Space­balls. Johan Renck’s vision of space trav­el posi­tions it as a com­mer­cial ven­ture, and Jakub’s ship is falling apart, held togeth­er by piece­meal spon­sor­ships from antibac­te­r­i­al wipe com­pa­nies and com­mu­ni­ca­tions cor­po­ra­tions. There’s a creep­ing sense that he nev­er intend­ed to come home to begin with, so weighed down by his inter­nalised lone­li­ness and fear of true con­nec­tion. But with Hanuš’s gen­tle, insis­tant prob­ing, Jakub starts to con­front him­self and the spec­tres of the past. The act of let­ting go becomes key to his survival.

Sci-fic­tion has proven an out­let through which to explore the anx­i­eties of human exis­tence since Mary Shel­ley wrote Franken­stein, but Space­man achieves a sort of weight­less­ness in a genre often bloat­ed by cheap effects and hol­low sen­ti­ment. Instead, Renck’s film floats along with a unique grace, reck­on­ing with the weight of pater­nal lega­cy and human fol­ly with sin­cer­i­ty, achiev­ing some­thing quite pro­found in the process. Over the film’s cred­its, an orig­i­nal song by the incom­pa­ra­ble musi­cial pio­neers Sparks, and Space­man com­pos­er Max Richter plays. A mourn­ful plea to a lover on the ver­sion of leav­ing, it reflects the film’s cen­tral romance, but also the friend­ship between Jakub and Hanuš – that most human design to be understood.