Adam Sandler made the decision to split the Adam many moons ago, with the ubiquitous and popular everyman alternating between broad comedies such as “Billy Madison,” “Happy Gilmore,” “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry,” “Grown-Ups” and the list goes on, and more substantial fare that showcased Sandler’s versatility, e.g., “Punch-Drunk Love,” “Spanglish,” “The Cobbler,” “Uncut Gems” and “Hustle.”
The Netflix original psychological sci-fi drama “Spaceman” falls squarely in the latter category, with Sandler eschewing the wacky voices and the goofy tics in favor of a genuine and layered performance as one Jakub Procházka, a Czech astronaut who is going through an existential crisis at an inconvenient time — 189 days into a solo space mission, on the outskirts of Jupiter and on the verge of possibly discovering the very origins of … well, everything.
Ground control to Major Tom, ground control to Major Tom. This is one trippy and melancholy and gripping Space Oddity. (There’s even something of a nod to the lines, “Tell my wife I love her very much…” “She knows.”)
Directed with bold style by Johan Renck (Emmy winner for “Chernobyl”), with Colby Day adapting the novel “Spaceman of Bohemia” from Jaroslav Kalfar, “Spaceman” takes place in what appears to be present day or the near future, even though some of the architecture and the interior of the spacecraft have a distinctly 20th century look. For the last four years, a beautiful but mysterious collection of purple particles known as the Chopra Cloud has hovered high in the sky above Earth, and Sandler’s Jakob has been sent by his government to travel some 500 million miles, collect some particles and then turn around and return home, with the mission taking approximately one year in total.
As we’ve come to expect from recent efforts such as the Apple TV+ series “Constellation” and the feature film “I.S.S.” and virtually every other TV show and movie set in deep outer space, Jakob’s journey to the heavens has taken on a hellish quality. The toilet keeps malfunctioning, the communications system is iffy, he’s having great difficulty sleeping — and most troubling of all, Jakob’s pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) is no longer answering their daily video calls.
As we eventually learn from flashback sequences, when Jakob and Lenka met, they almost instantly fell in love and at first their union was magical, but as Jakob focused on his work, he became ever more distant in more ways than one. While Jakob’s main contact in the space program, the physician Peter (Kunal Nayyar) and his commanding officer, Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), work to keep Jakob calm and keep him from the truth — that Lenka doesn’t want to talk to him anymore — Jakob is haunted by dreams of his troubled youth and seems on verge of a breakdown.
Then things get really weird.
A primordial and seemingly super-intelligent arachnid the size of a Bullmastiff suddenly materializes on the spacecraft, and he speaks in an almost disturbingly calm manner because he is voiced by Paul Dano, who specializes in playing characters who speak in a disturbingly calm manner. The spider, eventually dubbed Hanus by Jakob, comes telling tales of the destruction of his homeland and its inhabitants. He offers insights into the mysteries of the Chopra Cloud, and also seems to be able to read Jakob’s mind and even access his memories and his feelings about Lenka. Is Hanus real, or a figment of Jakob’s imagination? You tell me.
Hanus calls Jakob “skinny human” and begins to study him almost as if Jakob were a lab specimen. At first, Jakob wants nothing to do with this creepy crawler — he even tries to kill Hanus when he first sees him, which would be the natural reaction — but eventually these two lost, lonely souls form a bond that some might think is beyond absurd, but I found to be touching and inspired. I mean, come on, when have you ever wanted to see a person and a giant talking spider hug it out?
Director Renck and cinematographer Jakob Ihre deliver consistently arresting visuals, from the rendering of the Chopra Cloud to the muted color palettes back home to the flashback sequences, which have an almost hallucinogenic quality. The Lenka character is somewhat underwritten, but Carey Mulligan can deliver work that will take your breath away with a few sparse words of dialogue and some heartbreaking looks up at the sky. Sandler turns in some of his finest work, especially considering the bulk of his scenes have him paired with a talking spider. “Spaceman” is a wonderfully weird journey that ends on just the right and quite satisfying notes.