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There are films that hurt not so much because of what they are, which in principle there is nothing harmful in them, but because of what they could have been and, in the end, have not wanted or been able to be.
The Astronaut
, by
Johan Renck
and presented out of competition at the
Berlinale
, can be considered the star example from this very moment onwards. There is nothing definitively bad about this film. And yet, all the good that is missing weighs much more. The story is based on the unique and surprising (as well as funny in the best Czech tradition) novel by
Jaroslav Kalfar
'The Bohemian Astronaut'
(Tusquets). In it the story of the first Czech cosmonaut is told in first person, which is also the story of a son condemned to redeem the political sins of his father, which is also a reflection on forgiveness, poverty, time, loneliness, life as a couple and even
a giant spider with octopus legs.
Yes, monsters arise when too many serious arguments are accumulated in a text.
And of course, faced with such
a feast of good ideas,
one makes assumptions about the adaptation that one would have liked to see. Maybe something pompous and exaggeratedly epic like Nolan. Or perhaps visually lush but acutely aware of the desperate voice that dictates the narrative closer to Villeneuve's conception. Or, why not her, carnal and sick of herself (this is our favorite) as the best Cronenberg would undoubtedly have done. Or, one step further, chaotic and voracious with Abel Ferrara willing to sabotage the film itself in every shot. And then there are all the extremes you want.
Well, none of that. The Swede Johan Renck - previously known for a long list of advertisements, video clips and directing episodes of the series '
Chernobyl
' - banishes any attempt at a point of view and, supported by two stars such as
Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan ,
is carried away by the flattest and most equidistant of the proposals. Being a Netflix production, perhaps the imperative of adapting to the midpoint of the algorithm weighed more than any other. Who knows?
What really hurts, as has already been said, is thinking about all the options, and all of them valid, that we have missed.
To know more
CINEMA.
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Editor: PABLO SCARPELLINI Los Angeles
Adam Sandler, the least profitable actor in Hollywood
Cinema.
Netflix opens the safe: makes public the audience numbers for all its series and movies
Editor: PABLO SCARPELLINI Los Angeles
Netflix opens the safe: makes public the audience numbers for all its series and movies
Basically, it tells the story of a Czech astrophysicist named Jakub who accepts the most extreme and agonizing mission of all (going to collect samples of a strange cloud far beyond the stars) with the distant idea of obtaining the exoneration of his father, former member of the Communist Party. He wants to be a hero even if it costs him his marriage and his mental health. In solitude he will befriend an alien shaped like a large tarantula. Reality or projection of his mind? Everything indicates the latter, but we don't have to get so fine, because this is cinema.
The entry into
'The Astronaut'
could not be more surprising and happy. The sight of the man, alone with pure loneliness, before the creature, hairy with pure bestiality, shrinks not so much the soul as the tonsils. The viewer is placed before the possibility of replicating the disgust and fear of the protagonist himself.
But soon, the machinery, in order not to disturb, is deactivated.
The director chooses to open the range of options in a more than frantic attempt to tell everything. And all at the same time. What if the marital crisis, what if the paranoia, what if the 'flashbacks' of childhood... In essence everything is correct, even good, but so unfocused, so dispersed, so without any desire for depth and vertigo that it is discouraging.
Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan, for their part, offer their best-known and respectable versions. That is to say, nothing is known about the ironic and feverish tone with which the former waters his best works (
Diamonds in the Rough
or
The Meyerowitz Stories
) and everything is visible in the always tense register of the latter. What the cast does is not criticizable either. Again, what is uncomfortable is what they leave undone. It is not what it is, it is what could be. Pity.