Project Hail Mary Review: Brave and full of heart

What if you have no one to die for but are put on a mission to save everyone… and in a sense, everything in the universe? Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) of Project Hail Mary finds himself in such a predicament. Actually, he doesn't even know he is. When he wakes up from an induced coma, Grace finds himself in a spaceship light years away from home.

With his crew dead and his memory inching back to him due to the retrograde amnesia, Grace has to figure out why he is in the middle of space floating in a ship headed to Tau Ceti, a relatively nearby star to the Solar system–just 12 light years away (Didn't I say relative) from home. Grace slowly remembers himself as a school teacher, a nerd, a loner, and a norm-defying molecular biologist, but what he doesn't seem to understand or believe is why he would sign up for this one-way trip to save the world when he doesn't even have one soul to care about.

A converse of The Martian

In a sense, Project Hail Mary is the converse of writer Andy Weir's first film The Martian. In the Matt Damon film, the world tries to save one guy, and here one guy tries to save the world. But both are about the relentless pursuit of mankind's survival and the camaraderie that's required for our mutual existence.

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Project Hail Mary takes things a few notches above as the brotherhood goes beyond just humanity. It wills for an ambitious interstellar bond and effectively sells you that, but doesn't forget the ground reality. While it has a protagonist who is quick to trust an alien entity, it also has headstrong Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), the head of Project Hail Mary, who reminds that sharing resources has never been a human defining attribute.

But PHM, despite the pessimistic tone of the title, is a film brimming with hope and bravery against all odds. It tells a story of a potential doom with such deadpan and effortless humour. Ryan Gosling is at ease playing the perturbed Grace, who is at once brilliant and also self-doubting. The actor strikes a great balance in bringing out the genius and the vulnerability of Grace, without resorting to the usual nerdiness such characters carry.

All brain and more heart

PHM isn't the first sci-fi about saving the sun, but science here is as fascinating as the film itself. The success seems to lie in the way things are unpacked, with some brilliant exposition tools. First is, of course, the retrograde amnesia itself, and then we get a reluctant teacher explaining the doomsday to a bunch of curious kids, when he is not supposed to. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller seamlessly weave all this information drop. And that's what makes the film brainy, but what makes it a wonderful is its heart. Underneath the star-eating astrophages, Petrova lines, and Xenonites, and the dense science, PHM is essentially about its idea of bravery.

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To live is to care enough about something to die for. At one instance, Grace marvelling at the bravery of Yao Li-Jie (Ken Leung), the Chinese commander of the Hail Mary spacecraft, who seems to have no qualms about the suicide mission, says it has to do with his genes. But the veteran goes, "It's not a gene. You just have to have someone to be brave for." And that's exactly what Grace doesn't have, and that's what he finds, a reason that's worth dying for.