'the moral of project hail mary is that unfortunately eva stratt was right' 'the moral of project hail mary is that friendship will make you braver than you ever believed you could be' WRONG!!! the moral of project hail mary is BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WRITE YOUR THESIS ON
This is a follow-up to "I am losing my mind over the lighting of the Hail Mary," which I wrote pretty much to set context and argue It Really Is That Deep. Going into this, I am assuming you also believe the way lighting is used in PHM is intentional.
(Note: My screencaps come from a specific leak of PHM that is shockingly HQ but does have desaturation issues. I've done a HSV Saturation run on several images but not all of them. My screencap folder is like +300 items now and there's only so many hours in the day. If I could buy this on blu-ray TODAY I would.)
Sooooo... what's up with Grace and rainbows, question?
In Grace's very first flashback/recovered memory, one of the first things we see is a ring of light, rainbow. When he finally remembers being betrayed and put onto the Hail Mary against his will, this memory is triggered by the refracting light in Rocky's ship connecting to the rainbow overhead on the day he tried to run.
Refracted light is practically Grace's thumbprint smudged onto every corner of the story, the narrative voice in prismatic form. It truly reaches drinking game levels of ubiquity.
When Stratt first meets Grace, he just happens to be draped in a cloak of rainbow light. More subtly, but still obviously once you're looking for it, when he arrives on the aircraft carrier, he brings along a small halo of colored light.
At its most subtle, it comes from glass. Every time the camera implicitly slides into Rocky's POV, settling over his shoulder to observe Grace through xenonite glass, there are coronas to be found, touching Grace at all times. In the Clock Bros scene, when Grace leans in to observe Rocky's eridian clock, a smudge of refraction just happens to pop up. I cannot emphasize enough how no frame of this movie is safe from the rainbow.
Dr. Ryland Grace adjusts a light and it looks like a dance club in the Castro, it's absurd.
So, down to basics: why? What makes cameras do That Thing?
Well, it's not unique to cameras. It's a matter of glass and white-toned light. Modern camera lenses are either treated with a diffusion layer or have specific filters meant to diffuse light-- to break it up more clearly. When you use a lens without that coating, almost any light source can make this happen.
The rainbow, the prismatic light, it comes from a lack of filter, from the removal of deliberate or accidental barriers. You need light. You need glass. Clarity.
Okay but why, narratively?
Nope, not yet. First, let's look at Grace's physicality as more and more lenses surround him. I'm personally deeply obsessed with how Grace interacts with Rocky's xenonite barrier.
In their first meeting, Rocky assumes he's dealing with another creature that relies on hearing as primary form of perception. After all, Rocky can hear through to the other side of the Mary with pinpoint accuracy, can even track Grace's status and location on the hull of the ship when falling into high orbit. But this weird alien bypasses each section of the nice big solid acoustically-friendly wall to focus in on the one spot where light shines through.
So the next wall Rocky builds is geometric blocks of glass. Which Grace, without prompt, makes himself comfortable with, finding any and all alcoves and wedging himself in.
Fun fact: It takes less than 30 seconds for Grace to go from "IDK you watching me sleep is weird" before the smash cut to "i have now dragged a cushion, pillow, and my favorite quilt into the glass to sleep here." I counted 26 seconds.
I can't even make that weird by pointing anything out about it. We have already started at Grace making it weird, to my absolute delight.
But even when Rocky decides to move onto the Mary, Grace doesn't seem to mind beyond some token protests on his little vlog. Which is quite remarkable, because wow. Wow. Look at this.
Here is Ryland Grace, under glass.
There is such an secession of space to Rocky. Even if it weren't, these shapes and the way they bend light and cast shadows are the focal point of every scene. Always center of frame, and we always watch how Grace interacts with this, how he bends to duck underneath, how he drags monitors closer for Rocky to see, how he continues to sleep pressed along any sympathetic angle he can find.
Add to that how Grace is framed, as a significant chunk of the film is looking through the glass at Grace, and this begins to invert the core concept of what's occurring here. Who is in an enclosure here, really? Does the glass keep Rocky safe? Yes, but does it also keep Grace safe?
Even after the two have gone their separate ways, Grace doesn't dismantle the enclosures to reclaim the space. Instead, as he contemplates turning back to his almost-certain death to save Rocky and Erid, he lays in the Don't-Go-Crazy room with a foggy memory surrounding him, his body weight against alien glass.
Grace's happy ending was something that I could not even conceive of until the moment it happened. I honestly couldn't imagine the story would let Grace live, let him save Rocky, and then let him be a teacher again.
Erid is a planet without enough light to see, and yet the people there build a ball of glass just for Grace, tailored to his happiness and whim.
That's a whole lotta motif-building. Now is time for the question: what does it mean?
Art is subjective and my answer will differ from yours. Here's what it makes me feel:
Between this post and the previous table-setting post, the thing that I cannot stop fixating on is how this situation should feel versus how much effort the film goes into to avoid that exact emotional beat.
We have a story about a man from earth, sent off into space, expected to live out the remainder of his life on a spaceship. This ship is further encroached on by necessity as the space is sectioned out to create a habitable area for an alien. In the end, this man's reward is a dome built to give him a habitable space on an otherwise inhabitable planet. He'll never see his home planet ever again.
All of the markers are there. This should be a story of claustrophobia and small spaces and feeling trapped with the walls closing in and no way to break through them because death is on the other side, be it the void of space or the hot, ammonia-drenched atmosphere of Erid.
Should be.
But there's the other side of the story. Grace's last memory of Earth is his voice failing mid-sentence as a needle pierces his skin, as one of his only friends and protectors watches him struggle, and overheard there is a rainbow.
Earth wouldn't take no for an answer. He'd never be a teacher again. A barbed wire fence stands before the rainbow.
I know writers who use subtlety and they're all cowards.
Here's what Project Hail Mary is really saying, with all of its rainbows and refractions and a crying man who sleeps against prisms: Ryland Grace was the light the entire time. It's not something he's looking for, it's not the Deep Truth he's seeking. He just needed a way to shine, to remember it was there.
"Oh yeah, uh... I'm Grace," he says, introducing himself as the world blooms with colored light around him.
They told me that the end is near; we gotta get away from here.
i know rocky still technically got to play with the measuring tape in the movie but the way it happened in the book always makes me smile when I read it. :]
a lot has been said on the topic of "grace hiding that he was forced onto the hail mary so rocky doesn't think he's a coward" but i'd love for us to spend a moment meditating on grace hiding it so rocky doesn't think he's a bad person
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