Review: ‘Spaceman’s inconceivably important themes edge out its painful lack of commitment

Throughout his career, Adam Sandler has built himself a reputation whose singularity makes him arguably tantamount to a mythological figure in the world of cinema; here we have a man who has demonstrated time and time again that he has the acting chops necessary to tango with the best, and yet, when we hear the name “Adam Sandler,” the first thing that tends to spring to our minds is one of his many, goofy man-child turns in the vein of The Waterboy or Billy Madison.

To that point, Spaceman, the latest film to put the actor front and center, isn’t terribly dissimilar to the perennial plight of its leading man. Indeed, Netflix’s latest feature-length venture has strengths aplenty, but it’s clear that there’s a much better, boundlessly more profound film buried under the one we were given — and that’s cause for grave disappointment, both in spite of and because of the target that Spaceman wanted to hit.

Now, there is one, almost unforgivable mistake in play here, and that was the decision to not release Spaceman in theaters. In its own manner, Spaceman‘s vast dreamscape of a visual feast isn’t a far cry from the triumphs of its release-date sibling, Dune: Part Two (and what a triumph that was), and Max Richter’s gorgeously-crafted score, for all its mesmerizingly gentle tendencies, demonstrates an iron grip on one’s attention as the events of the film take shape around Sandler’s reluctant protagonist, Jakub. So, while it’s a shame that Spaceman‘s wickedly evocative epicurean aspects never made it to the big screen, the fact that they convey themselves as effectively as they do without such technology is a superb testament to their strength.

Speaking of Sandler, there’s a very particular, arguably corrupting joy in watching him take on any dramatic role, but while his performance as Jakub — a Czech astronaut hurtling straight towards a cloud of ancient space dust, as he silently reels from his collapsing marriage — is mostly befitting of Spaceman‘s very intimate identity, there’s a certain, overarching muteness to Sandler that only really impresses on occasion, and even when that muteness is overcome, those moments tend to be his weakest, anyway. The result, then, is the sense that there was some idea, whether it was a good one or not, on how to approach Jakub, but that idea hadn’t been fully domesticated, for lack of a better word, by Sandler when it came time to bring said idea into his performance.

Moreover, it’s unclear whether it was Sandler’s performance that influenced the film, or if it was the film that influenced Sandler’s performance (or some other third thing), because that same trepidation is clear in the way that Spaceman tends to approach its ideas; a weakness that’s majorly offset by the fact that the ideas themselves, as well as the steps it does take to explore them, are arguably some of the most important endeavors you can make — not just as an artist, but as a human being.

Indeed, thematically speaking, Spaceman has everything it needs to be an infinitely rejuvenating work of art; the gray space of Jakub’s floating base (paralleling that first memorable green space we see in his memories) is a delectable springboard for the film to navigate the nuances of our attempts at sanitizing ourselves from fear and uncertainty, an avoidant process which fundamentally detaches us from the whole of human experience. And who better to ground/confront Jakub about that which he’s running away from than a giant spider voiced by a top-of-his game Paul Dano? It would have been one thing to have a physical reminder aboard the ship of what humans are cerebrally built for, but to have that piece of nature be something as conceptually terrifying as that spider is textbook, simple-yet-effective thematic storytelling.

From there, the film’s reach only grows, going as far as offering up a deeply comforting insight into how we should honor our physical, emotional, and spiritual limitations as we move through our lives, without necessarily allowing them to control how we engage with those same lives. There’s a nigh-untouchable value in exploring what Spaceman wants to explore, so it’s all the more excruciating that it seems reluctant to take its own advice, which mostly seems to come by way of Spaceman being unsure whether Jakub is the most effective vehicle to explore these ideas. And when you’re working with ideas that require an incredibly open mind from your audience to reach their full potential, it’s no wise move to risk not having that vehicle.

As a character, there’s too much going on with Jakub for him gel consistently with the film’s goals; this works at a glance if you read that as a symptom of Jakub’s reluctance (which further plays into the hopeful idea that if someone like Jakub can achieve such personal enlightenment, anyone can), but unfortunately, it mostly manifests as a textual dance-around that, at best, fails to add anything to Spaceman‘s thematic excursion, and at worst, threatens to cheapen it by being too literal. This furthermore results in a journey that, despite housing a supremely nutritious destination for audiences, and enough thoughtful threads to satisfy until that destination is reached, doesn’t feel particularly natural or earned for Jakub himself, which some may find off-putting.

All in all, Spaceman is a film that seeks to square its audiences up against the concept of intimidation at its most cosmic. It’s perhaps one of the few films that can be sincerely lauded for its ambition, as it’s one thing to throw money at a heart-racing, James Cameron-esque set piece, but it’s quite another to quietly unpack the human condition in the most expansive, transcendental way possible, complete with the acutely meditative yet deceptively enormous music and visuals becoming of such an inner voyage.

And yet, the film quite frustratingly refuses to lead by example, mostly observing these ideas from afar whilst pointing us in their direction, without really committing itself to such a plunge. One might chalk this up to Spaceman‘s having set itself a goal just that difficult to achieve — not just as a film, but as a tangible expression at all — but that’s all the more reason for the filmmakers double down on fat-trimming, and to be a little more recklessly particular about what Spaceman, as a film that’s enabling these ideas that exist independently of us, actually wants to achieve by enabling them.

An alternate timeline might have seen this film sneak its way into the Oscars conversation — but in this one, Spaceman amounts to an unkemptly ruffled, partially unfinished map that, with the right pair of eyes upon it, leads to the treasure to end all treasure.