project hail mary rocked so hard !! genuinely such a beautiful movie. i got to see it in theaters, which made the visuals even more spectacular. my audience was great too, lots of laughs at the witty dialogue and the excellent performances (Gosling absolutely killed it). I loved the cinematography, so many cool shots, fun angles.
the movie knew too, when to take moments of just absolute silence. the first spacewalk grace takes through the connector to rocky’s ship, there’s just absolute quiet before it cuts to a pov inside his helmet where he’s breathing heavily- just awesome scene setting.
there is so much love and care and passion just bursting out of every aspect of this movie; the score is wonderfully sweeping, the way there’s no green screen usage, the dedication to using a tactile, physical set of the ship, the puppeteering team who brought Rocky to life (and the main puppeteer who understood the character so thoroughly that they couldn’t imagine anyone else voicing him), the breathtaking visual effects - the scene where Grace goes to get samples in the Petrova line, his sihouette against Adrian’s gorgeous green atmosphere, shifting to a shimmering pink, Grace and Rocky sitting against a shifting background screen of earth locations, and the various shots of their spacecrafts spinning around each other. Love oozes from everything in this movie, love for the ethereal worlds beyond us, for the worlds we come from, in the unthinkable bond between two lost souls drifting by each other in the endless sea of space.
And the cosmic hope at the core of it- the humanity in the notion that they will keep trying, Grace and Rocky, that despite the terrifying reality that’s brought them together they will find solace in each other. the little wins in learning about each other coalescing into the willingness to sacrifice themselves to save the other: Grace erasing the board asking “Who Am I?” and frantically doing the math to figure out how fast he can get to Rocky to save him. and that sacrifice not having to be the end of it all: Grace being able to find happiness after leaving Earth behind on the possible suicide mission to rescue the one lifeform that seemed to care about him beyond what he could do for them.
and ouagh the complicated relationship grace has with Stratt and the science crew he was working with. i keep thinking about the betrayal he was feeling when he was forced onto the Mary, the way he was so desperately trying to escape only to end up alone, confused, light years from earth and never to return. between him and simon iron lung this really is the year of unwilling sacrificial lambs for the greater good huh. both just wanting to live, recognizing that they are afraid but being ignored and overruled for the sake of everyone else. I like how both characters were able to find some kind of peace with that, in the end, but the way they get there is just so devastating.
this is turning into an essay but anyways i love the humanity phm celebrates, the radical hope it has that we will endure, we will thrive, that against impossible odds humans will find connection and love even in the depths of space, with a little rock creature :,)
