Describe a movie as “inspirational,” and you create the impression that the film will be full of feel-good sentiment, soaring spirit—that it will be so emotional. Ridley Scott’s The Martian is largely a cold, deliberate film, but there’s still something undeniably stirring about it. Instead of showering us with treacle, the film pays tribute to simple human attributes such as smarts, teamwork, sacrifice and determination, going about its business much like its resourceful characters do. And yet, the film’s underlying message is nonetheless inspiring: We can do great things if only we put our minds to it.
Based on Andy Weir’s 2011 novel, The Martian is set in a not-too-distant future in which U.S. astronauts are conducting manned missions to the Red Planet. The latest expedition finds a crew that includes Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) and botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) getting ready to return home to Earth when a deadly storm suddenly bears down on them. In the rush to return to their ship, Watney is hit by debris and presumed dead, Lewis reluctantly taking the rest of her crew into space.
Except, of course, Watney hasn’t really died. With the rest of his team already into their return trip, heading for the third rock from the sun, he makes it back to the Martian-American base, quickly realizing that it will be months until another crew can reach him—and he doesn’t have the food to survive that long. Calm and resourceful, Watney begins formulating a plan that will provide him enough sustenance until NASA realizes he’s still alive. Being a botanist may not be a sexy profession, but it may just save his life.
Like a mixture of Apollo 13 and All Is Lost, The Martian is about know-how, celebrating brainpower to solve a seemingly impossible situation. Spanning more than a year, The Martian doesn’t spend much time exploring Watney’s mental makeup, Scott (who tends not to be much of a bleeding-heart filmmaker) seemingly uncurious about how someone would stay sane living completely alone on an inhospitable planet for so long. But if that means this film isn’t particularly psychologically rich, there’s also a benefit: By not delving into its protagonist’s head space, The Martian makes Watney’s quest all the more impressive. As title cards indicate how many days it’s been since we last checked in on Watney—sometimes, months have gone by—we absorb the length of time and marvel at how hard it must be.
Happily, The Martian is not a survival story in which the main character’s physical ordeal is married to some sort of inner journey. Watney may be underdeveloped, but he’s not some clichéd wounded or troubled soul who needs this adventure to “learn” something about himself. (In other words, Watney’s not like Tom Hanks’s marooned character in Cast Away, whose ordeal became a cosmic teachable moment about not being so obsessed with the rush-rush-rush of modern life.) Largely unsentimental, The Martian doesn’t have time for platitudes or life lessons: Watney has to stay alive, and the folks back home have to figure out how to communicate with him and get him off that rock.
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