3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Spaceman

 2024, Johan Renck (Chernobyl) -- Netflix

I have a recurring daydream / dream / vignette story about a lone astronaut on a long journey trapped in solitude with nothing to do but his duties on the spaceship and whatever distractions he was able to bring along with him. There was a time in my past when the idea of imposed solitude was a grand idea for me. I could take all the laundry to the local laundromat and wile away a couple of hours amusing myself. It was me time when I did not have to worry about all the things I should be doing as I was doing this. The same could be applied to any gap in time, between places or between things being done. I could so easily get lost, pleasantly, in my own thoughts and ponderances.

That is so very much not the current state of things. Without constant distraction, any idle time, even a simple walk from the subway to home, lets intrusive thoughts overwhelm me. I cannot be alone with my thoughts anymore for they betray me. Its annoying AF. I miss the idea that I could easily be a lone spaceman where just the act of being alone on a spaceship was actually "getting things done".

Jakub (Adam Sandler, Little Nicky) is a cosmonaut for what I can only assume is an alternate reality Czech Republic. Everything about the movie has the visual flare that mixes Soviet brutalism and American capitalism. Jakub is on a mission to investigate a purple cloud deep in space, one that can be see in the night sky of Earth but nobody knows why it is there, just that it appeared some four years prior. They mention he will be alone for a year, separated from his pregnant wife, but connected to Earth and her by a quantum technology called CzechConnect, basically Facetime with zero lag despite the vast distances.

The problem is that Lenka (Carey Mulligan, Drive), Jakub's wife, has had enough of his distances, and not just the spatial ones. Jakub is a difficult man to be married to. He is aloof, quiet, unemotional and always chooses his duty over her, even agreeing to this journey without much concern for her well-being. She leaves him, refusing to connect. Consequently, Jakub's mental state deteriorates and mission control is concerned. It doesn't help that the toilet screams all night and they won't authorize him to do the necessary repairs. 

Then an alien shows up. Its terrifying. Its a spider but half the size of a person. But it has a soothing voice and tells Jakub (or "skinny human") it has felt his loneliness from afar and has come to talk to him. Failing cameras all over the ship mean nobody ever sees it but him. Is Jakub insane? Is he hallucinating the alien? Does it even matter? In the context of the movie, no it does not.

I get Jakub. I have always been mostly solitary. I don't have a vast number of friends. I am usually quiet and ... well, maybe not "happy" on my own, but usually more comfortable. Or at the very least in small numbers. In the context of work I can do crowds and social interaction, but outside it, I am challenged. Unlike Jakub who has reasons from his past, I have just always been this way, nobody to blame.

The alien, who eventually takes the name Hanuš (Paul Dano, The Batman), wants to help Jakub complete his mission but needs him to acknowledge he is the cause for all his own woes. Jakub, like all solitary people, is stubborn and doesn't want to admit his own faults. Their interaction takes time. And then they arrive at the purple cloud, which Hanuš claims is made up of the beginning of the Universe.

This is one of those times where the direction of the plot takes the exact expected course, in that Jakub does have a realization with Hanuš' help. But its the journey that matters, the way the movie travels, the fun details and little stops along the way. There is no great reveal here, neither in the cloud's existence nor in Jakub's issues (daddy issues) but the melancholy that everything was handled with really spoke to me. I get sadness, I get loneliness,  I get solitude.

Of note, this is one of the movies where Adam Sandler plays against character. I am so used to him putting on his voice. He always sounds a certain way, even when he is playing a character in a non-comedy, but in this movie, he just spoke more plainly than I recall him speaking before. He was clear, articulate and measure. It was refreshing.