Why Prox­i­ma is a giant leap for moth­er­hood on screen

In the end cred­its for Prox­i­ma the names and images of moth­ers and their chil­dren are shown, fam­i­ly por­traits where each of these women are kit­ted out in full astro­naut gear. These brave women are the real-life indi­vid­u­als that Alice Winocour’s film hon­ours. Through explor­ing Sarah Loreau’s (Eva Green) aspi­ra­tion of leav­ing Earth, while bat­tling her role and respon­si­bil­i­ty as a moth­er to her young daugh­ter, Prox­i­ma unites the roles of moth­er and astro­naut; both are syn­ony­mous with ven­tur­ing into the unknown.

While preg­nant astro­nauts are pro­hib­it­ed to fly in space, many indi­vid­u­als who have had chil­dren have ven­tured beyond Earth’s orbit. Anna Fish­er was the first per­son to trav­el into space as a moth­er, launch­ing and return­ing the Space Shut­tle Dis­cov­ery in 1984. Though oth­er women have come before Eva Green’s Sarah in Prox­i­ma, no amount of prepa­ra­tion can ever ful­ly equip some­one for leav­ing the Earth or rais­ing a human. Both are intre­pid adven­tures tack­led in dif­fer­ent ways and with no set instruc­tion manual.

Explor­ing unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry is what intrin­si­cal­ly con­nects the jour­ney of moth­er­hood and astro­nau­ti­cal explo­ration. Cli­max­ing with daunt­ing prospects of child­birth and liftoff; two moments of immense pres­sure, hope­ful­ly then fol­lowed by a mirac­u­lous cel­e­bra­tion of human life and achievement.

Both these feats of human engi­neer­ing, one with­in the body cre­at­ing a new life and the oth­er a tri­umph of tech­no­log­i­cal pow­er, act as efforts in the preser­va­tion of human­i­ty. The mir­a­cle of life is cel­e­brat­ed as a child is born and as a space shut­tle takes off, both moth­er­hood and the role of an astro­naut ask for a ded­i­ca­tion from the body that is ulti­mate­ly for the pro­gres­sion of humankind.

To ven­ture beyond the bound­aries of Earth is to put your life in the hands of oth­ers and hope they’ve made the right cal­cu­la­tions, in the same way a child innate­ly relies on their care­giv­er to sur­vive. Sarah’s grav­i­ty is the love she has for her daugh­ter, which anchors her to Earth and repeat­ed­ly pulls her back into her child’s orbit. Choos­ing between moth­er and astro­naut is not an option because these roles are not inter­change­able, they are one and the same.

Par­ents often remark on how their world­view changes after hav­ing a child, sim­i­lar­ly to how the out­look of an astro­naut is for­ev­er changed when they see Earth from space. Both even­tu­al­i­ties result in an expe­ri­ence of shift­ing per­spec­tives on moral­i­ty, human­i­ty and reliance.

This blur­ring of moth­er and astro­naut is also seen in Prox­i­ma visu­al­ly. Astro­naut train­ing requires Sarah to under­go tests and sim­u­la­tions to prove her readi­ness for space trav­el. In doing so, her body is put under intense strain as her willpow­er to with­stand inhu­man expe­ri­ences is assessed. In repli­cat­ing zero grav­i­ty, the astro­nauts have to per­form tasks under­wa­ter with restrict­ed move­ment; the moment repli­cates a womb-like expe­ri­ence of float­ing in dark­ness, dis­ori­en­tat­ed. In the process of expe­ri­enc­ing out­er-space, Sarah finds her­self return­ing to a place innate­ly human: the womb.

Oth­er rein­car­na­tions of repli­cat­ing out­er-space show Sarah con­nect­ed to the space shut­tle via a teth­er that appears like an umbil­i­cal cord. These visu­als fur­ther the the­mat­ic links of depen­den­cy and con­nec­tion that tie into the com­par­i­son between space explo­ration and moth­er­hood. With a vehe­ment deter­mi­na­tion, Sarah embarks on a jour­ney of emo­tion­al­ly test­ing moth­er­hood and an astro­nom­i­cal adven­ture in a way that is innate­ly car­ing, doing every­thing she can to be close to her daugh­ter while the space between them grows.

Per­haps the most adven­tur­ous trip in the expe­ri­ence of being human, com­pa­ra­ble to leav­ing Earth for space, is the jour­ney of rais­ing anoth­er life.