Saving Grace
At last, a mainstream movie with no antecedents (OK, OK, it was adapted from a novel by Andy Weir, author of The Martian) or affiliation with any known and probably exhausted intellectual properties, an original film to enjoy on its own merits. With only one tiny caveat, Camus is greatly entertained by PROJECT HAIL MARY…
“After optioning the rights to the book, Gosling sought the pair out, sending them Andy Weir’s manuscript. Is it common for one of the most famous actors in the world to stick a manuscript in the post? “The short answer is: no. That’s not common,” laughs Lord. Miller jumps in: “But we had known Ryan for over a decade. We’d occasionally have breakfast with him and talk about working together someday, so he made it happen.”
Gwilym Mumford interviewing directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in The Guardian 1
Let’s acknowledge that the individual elements of this vastly entertaining film have been seen many times before. Let’s also acknowledge that it’s the journey not the film’s predictability or familiarity that represents the DNA of its fascination and entertainment value. And it’s quite the journey. With one small and relatively insignificant caveat, this is the most entertaining big budget Hollywood film that’s come along for a while and its effectiveness is due mainly to two normally disparate elements; sheer star power and exquisite puppetry. Yes, puppetry. There must be heaps of undetectable computer generated imagery in there somewhere (we’re in deep space for a start) but the point is contained within the word ‘undetectable’. You are watching an alien character interact with a human being and not once do you wonder how it was done. You accept, empathise and go with the heartfelt burgeoning flow of that relationship. That’s the extent of the benign spell the movie casts on its audience. I didn’t see it in a true IMAX presentation but if you get a chance to, I suspect that its deep space visuals will knock your socks off.
In the film, two timelines play out simultaneously and are intercut and interwoven throughout; the present in deep space playing chronologically and the flashbacks on Earth presented likewise. A bearded man wakes up from an induced coma to find himself alone on a space craft, the Hail Mary. He finds a couple of expert and highly trained astronauts, a pilot and an engineer whose corpses don’t offer him much of their expertise. The man has no memory of how he got there – though it’s coming back to him in dribs and drabs – but scientifically, he is especially gifted with plenty of time to master his home from home. In the second timeline flashback, the bearded man, Rylance Grace, is revealed to be a humble science teacher who seems to love his job and is appreciated by the children he teaches. Grace published a scientific paper embarrassing a higher up in the scientific community and was subsequently ostracised from that community. He chose a modest life well outside of scientific academia. But that paper and the singular mind that created it brings him to the attention of Eva Stratt, the head of the mysterious Hail Mary Project.
If you were as confused as I was about a deep space mission being named after a Catholic prayer, then here’s why. A ‘Hail Mary’ in American Football is a final, frantic attempt to get the ball as far up the field as possible as the seconds count down with almost no hope of success for a clean catch and touchdown. I guess a synonym would be Project: Extreme Long Shot which seems doubly apt. Grace is invited – some might say coerced – into using his cerebral talent to solve the most pressing of global problems. An alien oil-like slick is draining the sun of its energy dooming all life on Earth to a mere 30 years of survival. Project Hail Mary is set up to research and understand the alien organism and use its inherent storing and output of energy to send a space craft to the only sun/star in the galaxy that has escaped the star-draining effect. They christen the oil-like slick the ‘astrophage’. I loved the contradictory idea that part of the solution to the problem is the problem itself. Essentially, Grace is sent out to find the reason why one star is immune to the astrophage and to use that discovery to ensure the continuance of his home planet’s survival. Grace takes his time getting used to his ship when he is alerted to an approaching object, one he nicknames Blip 1 based on the proximity radar read out. He is suddenly joined by an enormous alien craft that dwarfs the Hail Mary, one that shadows his ship’s every move. Suiting up for a spacewalk, he catches a small alien flask tumbling towards him and finds an expandable metal structure inside showing the relative positions of the planets and the resident star in this part of the astral neighbourhood. The existence of alien intelligence is a firm handshake and before long, Grace is introduced to a multi-legged alien traveller named unimaginatively by Grace as ‘Rocky’, sent on the same mission to save its own home world from the effects of the astrophage…
As Mark Kermode has pointed out in his own review, one of his favourite films is regarded as an inspirational forerunner to Project Hail Mary. In Silent Running, a lone (and it has to be said, murderous) astronaut is befriended by a trio (and after an accident, a duo) of robots cunningly played by leg amputees to disguise their ‘human in a box’ nature. They are affectionately named Huey, Dewey and Louis after Donald Duck’s nephews. There is a strong resemblance to the alien in Project Hail Mary because of its own ungraspable blocky shape with limbs. In appearance, think of Rocky as the baby offspring of the rock monster from Galaxy Quest. Apart from being set in deep space, Project Hail Mary’s resemblance to Silent Running ends there. But I happily concede Mark’s point.
As Grace, Ryan Gosling has proved his comic chops many times over – watch The Nice Guys for proof – but this film asks him to mine a wider range than he’s been expected to perform before and he is more than up to the task. The film is also his pet project as he initiated it and brought directors Lord and Miller in to realise it. His character deflects awkward situations with wry humour, irony and bafflement but out in space with problems to solve, he rises to every challenge as if he’s somehow suppressed the part of him that crawled inside a defensive hole earlier in his life. And Gosling does an excellent line in pained whimpering, slapstick and theatrical fear. He’s also very easy on the eye and an extremely charismatic and natural performer. There aren’t that many actors in the cast but first let’s acknowledge Gosling’s direct co-star… James Ortiz not only puppeteers Rocky as a practical effect, but he’s the voice of the alien creature, one finally settled on after many vocal try outs. Those included, of all people, Meryl Streep (“Is there nothing she can’t do?”) and a Liverpudlian accented AI fellow which for some reason amuses Grace no end. With the help of a laptop, this essentially means that both Grace and Rocky can have an ongoing conversation. Needless to say, Gosling and Ortiz make a delightful duo. Sandra Hüller plays Eva Stratt, the project leader who has to somehow coerce Grace into deep space after a disastrous first launch. Very much the German with some stereotypical German directness and mannerisms (if a nationality can still weather such clichés) but she remains sympathetic and breaks her steely resolve on the eve of the launch by joining in on a karaoke session. There is a brilliant cut in this sequence of the two guards outside the party room who turn their heads to listen to her sing. It’s not needed but somehow it’s damn perfect. Congrats to the directors who shot it and editor Joel Negron for his exquisite timing.
The central joy of the story is clearly the developing relationship between the Earthman and the Eridian (a being from the closest planet to the 40 Eridian Star System), the latter appearing as a highly capable and intelligent rock spider. Both characters live in environments deadly to the other. Rocky exists in a clear angular sphere as contradictory as that sounds but you’ll know what I mean when you see it. This is its version of a space suit which maintains a very high temperature and a specific Eridian gaseous atmosphere within and is able to travel inside the Hail Mary ship. Not ten minutes pass by without a smile or a belly laugh. There are three moments at least where the stakes are high and the principal friendship actually becomes quite moving. One minute, a laugh, the next an explosion, the next you’re close to tears, a rollercoaster ride for sure. For the final scene alone, and the last two shots, the film is worth seeing.
Daniel Pemberton’s score does his job extremely adroitly emphasizing the risks in deep space and the triumphs and lows of the characters’ experiences with a full blown and rich musical palette. Where Project Hail Mary wanders off the musical path – surprisingly effectively – is in its use of what’s known in the industry as ‘needle drops’, music cues that are fully fledged and well known songs from all over the place temporally and culturally. Of the fifteen (count them) different songs, none of which were familiar to me, including the Beatles’ cue, the ‘score’ of this film is about as diverse and unique as anyone could wish. The fact that all fifteen tracks don’t wrench you out of the film is a minor miracle. I was simply aware of music so, so different from the bespoke score but went with the filmmakers’ inclusions with no problems at all. These are filmmakers at the very top of their game and the film works in every respect except for the afore mentioned caveat.
Star Wars editor Paul Hirsch wears a cap in his Facebook posts that reads “Make Movies Shorter.” How I wish someone would listen (or at least read it and make it so). Yes, average running times have climbed over 24 per cent since the 30s and there are some good reasons for this (directorial clout, savings on print costs) but a film’s length is largely irrelevant to the quality of the film. The Right Stuff’s three hours and 13 minutes goes by like lightning while Mother’s Pride’s modest one hour and 33 minutes seem like an unholy eternity. But a long running time is a little frustrating when you have so many plot threads to tie off. Project Hail Mary is 156 minutes long… OK, let’s chop off 10 minutes for the thousands of crew names in the end credits but that makes the film still four minutes shy of two and a half hours. Now, I’m not complaining as such (seriously, I’m not) because of how enjoyable the film is but the climaxes and problem solving that are accompanied by Daniel Pemberton’s intense, building Interstellar-like score really strongly suggest a denouement and an incoming ending… what feels like four times. I’m not talking about Return of the King levels of faux endings but the film is really, at this length, a victim of its own quality. It delivers emotionally satisfying denouements when you really think the drama’s over, but no… So like House music when climaxes are subtly moderated, the film almost over-delivers in attempting to give the audience what we expect or hope to see but takes its time doing so. If only the central part of the film could have been compressed losing a small percentage of the running time, say 10 minutes… That said, the final scene is one of the most charming of the film which wraps things up perfectly but I could have done with getting to it just a little earlier. This is my only gripe. Otherwise, treat yourself to a high budget, high entertainment, mainstream Hollywood film that delivers the goods and makes you hope that all is not lost in Tinseltown. It’s reported that Project Hail Mary enjoyed a surprisingly strong box office opening weekend. Having enjoyed the film tremendously, I can’t say I was surprised.
Project Hail Mary
US 2026 | 156 mins
directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
written by: Drew Goddard; based on the novel by Andy Weir
cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub, Ken Leung
UK distributor: Columbia Pictures Corporation Ltd.
UK release date: 20 March 2026