Every kid back in school; Hollywood waiting for all the summer production schedules to wind down. When they do? The voting academy, aka Oscar, will have a bit more living room time to pop in their DVDs the promo videos and start looking for the next Best Picture.
Whcih means what for us? It's the Attack of the Nadir. A Cusp of orphaned films.
"Bob? What do we do with this picture?"
They release it in October. Truly, these are the movies that are very hit-or-miss and do well as counterprogramming against the Hollywood slasher types that come out at this time of year.
And I think I found a hit.
Yes, it stars Matt Damon. Matt's one of those actors who really had made good on his career and tries really hard to use his star vehicles to his advantage. He was Bourne. Jason Bourne.
And he's a good actor, to boot.
Good looking, ability to match, he's something of the old school Hollywood types, who keeps cranking out movies. His latest endeavor is this appealing The Martian based on the self-published book of the same name.
And you can see why it was orphaned.
The film was made, first, by Ridley Scott. He's a very, very unique director, one of the few that has the vision and scope to take a big budget and make it shine on the screen. If you believe autheur-theory, he tends towards books and prewritten materials and marries them a production representation that literally bursts at the seams. I mean it. Most movies have several characters, shit-ton of special effects, but must follow formula that can be a predicted hit. Scott doesn't do that. All of his tales rely, heavily, on a source material and IT MUST BE EPIC.
We're talking David Lean and Sir Richard Attenbourough productions. Shots with thousands of people in period costumes. Movie sets that blot out the sun. Actors that are mere specks on the landscape.
Ridley came to my notice in the late 70s with the horror movie Alien. Not a positive picture. It was based on the source material of Giger, an artist. It was Ridley's last foray into space, and, well, knowing that picture, I figured that The Martian would have the same bleak outlook on space and beyond. In Alien, you had basic space-truckers that are mauled to death for being working class and the corporations just wanted to have their possible weapon. He was the one who also made Blade Runner (again, source material by Phil K. Dick), which showed a future where being human isn't really being human.
Not exactly family fare nor adult fare. Heavy topics shot in sequences that show how small we are.
But I have applauded him for his approach. Speilberg works with large components, but he tends to fawn and lull over topics, hence the term, 'Spielbergian.'
Not with Ridley.
But he has gone and done something that even I was shocked to see.
He made a big budget family film. Okay, I can't say a children's film, due to some language issues and shots of Damon's eggplant, but done in a manner that's approachable and mature. The movie is true joy.
Let me put it to you this way.
There's no punching.
There's no violence.
See, as an English teacher, we have to discuss conflicts in fiction. There are five.
And my students? They would always name the easiest one and could never, if ever, find an example of the others. Take a look and follow my thinking:
Person v person
Person v self
Person v nature
Person v society
Person v technology
Now, take a wild step, with all the public violence happening on campuses today, which on my students always could understand and identify?
Person vs. a person. Wars. Light saber battles. Star ships. Aliens bursting out of chests.
But what about a person vs themselves? The kids had a hard time with that one. How can you be in conflict with yourself?
I finally found that motion picture.
In "The Martian," Matt plays Mark Whatney, a effable botanist working on Mars when a storm hits and the crew has to abandon the mission. He gets left behind, ala Robinson Crusoe, and the movie starts. Here's the thing-the movie fills up with his humor and posititve vibes so much, it becomes evident that he won't die by suicide, that's for sure. We start to root for him.
Not only that, Ridley changes gears here. Even the bad guy, easily seen as the government and embodied by the extremely talented but massively underused Jeff Daniels as NASA director Teddy Sanders, is not really bad. He's doing his job and not wasting billions of tax payers' budgets by sending a mission back (of course, he does change his mind, or we'd not have a picture). The film is like a Robert Altman piece, bursting with star talent, even in smaller, two-line roles. However, this is one of the smaller faults. Ridley is used to grand scale. Unlike Altman, many famous names are pretty much wasted for, like, well, two lines.
But I enjoyed it, a reason to go to the movies and fill like you've been satisfied. It rekindled a certain sense of wonder, lost by going to Disney World too many times over and over again. It's so massively approachable, that I cannot think of anyone who would not enjoy such a piece.
That includes you.
