HAZED RECOMMENDS: THE MARTIAN
by Hazed
Topping the box office charts this week in the US and the UK is a new film called The Martian, in which Matt Damon plays an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars after a mission goes wrong. It’s got a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so I’m not the only one who really loved it.
Its release is timely, given the current interest in Mars thanks to NASA’s announcement about water on the planet last week, but I suspect it would have done well anyway – because it’s a really excellent movie.
The plot is simple. After he is left for dead on Mars, and with no chance of a rescue for five years, botanist Mark Watney has to figure out how to survive in a habitat that only has enough supplies for a few months. As he says, he is going to have to “science the shit” out of his situation in order turn things around. And he does.
Demonstrating the kind of ingenuity previously seen in MacGyver, he figures out how to increase his water supply, and grow potatoes using his own poo as fertiliser. Not to mention patch up a damaged spacesuit with duct tape!
Meanwhile back on Earth, the mission controllers have to deal with the discovery that he is still alive, and try to come up with a way to communicate with him and help him survive. Meanwhile they work flat out to get some kind of rescue mission together.
But the focus is on the lone astronaut, the Martian of the title. Matt Damon plays him as a cheerful optimist, who is only dismayed momentarily by setbacks and fills his video diary entries with jokes (and complaints about the disco music he has been left with by the mission’s captain – said music providing an unusual soundtrack to the movie).
The Martian is directed by Ridley Scott and it’s his best film in years. It’s beautifully photographed, with the landscape of the red planet looking just like we have come to expect from the pictures sent to us by Curiosity and other rovers. You get a real sense of the vastness of the plains in which the action takes place, and the isolation of being the only person on the planet.
The film is based on a book by Martin Weir which was released in February of last year. I have read the book and I can report that the film is a reasonably faithful adaptation. But even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still thrilled by the movie and caught up in the drama and tension. If you don’t know the outcome of the film then the tension must be almost unbearable.
It’s also one of the few films that I consider worth seeing in 3D, giving added depth to the landscape. But whatever format you choose, I highly recommend that you go and see The Martian.
Get the details of The Martian on IMDB here.
If you feel like reading the book, here it is on Amazon.
