THE MARTIAN

Saw 'The Martian' on Saturday. My reaching-late-for-movies stars continue to shine bright! Must be my karma! I reached at 8.15 pm, well in time for the 8.35 show as per BookMyShow, only to find that it was an 8.05 show. So the distraught me ended up entering the screen 15 minutes late, bugged a couple of neighbouring seat fellas to un’earth’ (get the pun?) the-story-so-far and settled into the movie. It wasn't that difficult to guess what was going on anyways…. I should have spared the poor neighbouring fellas the agony!

It's a through and through feel good movie, but a tad bit too uncomplex. Man gets left behind on Mars, man does not panic at all, man figures out successfully how to fend for himself, man does everything absolutely correctly in the first attempt, man suffers only one mishap in the entire span of whatever number of sols, man does not experience even one storm which was the reason for his being left there in the first place, man succeeds in rejoining his team!

Bit too one-dimensional, not enough layers in the storyline. Since I have not read the book I am not qualified to comment whether that is the inherent character of the storyline of the book or whether the movie is an oversimplified version of the book.

In any case, makes me wonder why Matt Damon was zeroed in as the cast. I personally find his personality very lack luster. What is it with these casting directors and the casting of these space movies in the recent year? First it was Mathew McConaughey and Anna Hathway (seriously??) in Interstellar, now it's Matt Damon. Looks like no one good wants to do these space movies (I can hear the Matt Damon fans already sharpening their claws, ready to come at me). :)

But, once in a while it does feel good to watch a movie that you can sense is going to end positively. Your brain is not in a tizzy trying to follow the contorting storyline and gear up for the shocks to come. Rather it is tranquil enough so you can for once patiently field your 6 year old who keeps on harping that since the popcorn is over she wants to go home.

Finally the West seems to have woken up to the astronomical number (get the pun again??) of Indians in NASA, enough to cast a ‘Vincent Kapoor’ as one of the NASA bigwigs. It does seem fair that Indian names are finally beginning to appear in their storylines.

The ‘moment of the movie’ for me was when the crowds in all countries are waiting with a bated breath for the Mars Expedition crew to rescue the stranded astronaut. At that moment it felt like a tiny drop of the sea of humanity of the Earth has been left behind on Mars, and this sea is waiting for its drop to rejoin it. That moment swept away all my skepticism and I flowed with that feeling of triumph of humanity!

In spite of my skepticism, The Martian is definitely a must watch! The sheer scale of the setup, the detailing, the very notion of human reaching the Mars, are all not to miss! But those in Nagpur have missed the bus already as the movie has left theaters. You might still catch the ‘Ay Bhidu’ version of it though, if you can stomach it!