The Martian depended on Matt Damon's performance in the lead role. In contrast to spiritual predecessors like Gravity and Castaway it wasn't a one-man show--there's a murders row of supporting actors and an important story of what's going on back home--but the film spent a great deal of time with Damon's Mark Watney and his lonely trials and tribulations on a desolate planet. That meant that for much of the movie, Damon alone had to convey his character's distress, his resolve, his humor, and his humanity, with no one but the camera to talk to, and he did it with flying colors. I have yet to see many of the big films and lauded performances of 2015, but it's hard to imagine many roles with a degree of difficulty like this one, and the performance Damon delivered more than lived up to the challenge.
Part of what makes Watney likable and endearing enough that the audience not only tolerates spending the film with him, but invests in his plight and attempts at rescue, is the humor in the film. It's not surprising in a film penned by Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Drew Goddard, but despite the extreme premise of the film and the world's-watching stakes of the conflict, the dialogue is filled to the brim with laughs about the silly and mundane in the midst of the weighty circumstances Watney and the team trying to help him back home, and the film includes so many of those small human moments that help viewers buy into a plot focused alternatively on solving science problems and technobabble.
Those human moments--from demeaning then giving into Commander Lewis's taste in music to reassuring your boss that a profane kiss off might have been meant in a positive way--are important, because beyond Watney, most of the film's characters are quick sketches. That never hurts the film, however, because even when the characters feel stock--Donald Glover as the unorthodox young engineer, Jeff Bridges as the kind-hearted but pragmatic head of the agency--each of the actors in a stellar cast sells their role in the supporting ensemble with aplomb and each of them has just enough flavor to make them distinct.
The tone of the film helps on that front as well. The way The Martian balances the crestfallen sense that Watney is doomed, the joy in his sisyphean efforts to survive, the tension in the moments where he struggles to find a solution or the efforts to rescue him hit a setback, and the simple but sweet reminders that these are human beings who do silly things even in a crisis. Keeping things light, while never sacrificing the emotion or the stakes of the narrative is a difficult task, but Goddard's script and Ridley Scott's direction manage it with style.
It's hard to believe that Scott is the same director who unleashed Prometheus on the world just a few short years ago. Whereas one space-bound film, albeit one that hews more toward science fiction, is practically incoherent in terms of its plot, The Martian builds plausibly and organically, to where despite the film's 2+ hour runtime, the narrative progresses so smoothly, and the characters' decisions and actions seem so natural and logical in that progression, that you barely feel it.
At the same time, Scott makes the most of his setting and his stars. The production design, from the realistic but futuristic ships and equipments in space to the rust-colored vistas Scott sweeps through in wide shots, add to both the reality and the beauty of the film. Scott also frames much of the film through third-person video screens, whether it's Watney's video journals or CNN coverage of a NASA press conference, which gradually fade into a more traditional shot, conveying both a sense of verisimilitude in these somewhat outlandish events, but also a personal, intimate sense of place, especially with the film's protagonist. In total, it creates beautiful images to wow the viewer with the scope and magnitude of the setting and the problem, but also brings the audience closer to the protagonist.
The film's greatest achievement is how it fosters a complete buy-in with Watney's struggle. In a film that feels like a cross between Hatchet and Apollo 13, the way The Martian shows its main character solving problem after problem with good humor and without making him seem like an implausible wunderkind breeds affection and investment. In many survival films along these lines, the endgame feels inevitable, and the emotional stakes of the climax suffer. The Martian does falter a bit in manufacturing additional, piled on drama at the film's close, but there's such a catharsis in its conclusion, in the form of a beautifully composed scene that, good-or-bad, represents the culmination of the personal struggle of Watney, and the delirious efforts of Vincent Kapoor (a crackling Chiwetel Ejiofor) on the ground.
The Martian features the trappings of classic film--the dizzying shots, the foxhole compatriot mentality, the best and brightest scrambling to do right, and the man against nature narrative, replete with some leafy green symbolism--but it uses it all in service of the supremely human and nerdy. And it can boast a virtuoso performer who can amuse and enthrall with nothing more than a disco soundtrack and a potato. The excitement, pathos, and laughter Scott, Goddard, Damon, and their collaborators are able to wring from what is often a very solitary journey is no small achievement, and The Martian offers a feel-good story that earns every bit of the feeling.
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