First of all, I don't think the movie is really bad. There are three reasons. Visually, it's very beautiful, especially the part of the moon. I haven't watched space science fiction for too long, and I've forgotten when was the last time someone tried their best to photograph people and things on the moon into this black and white look. In terms of rhythm, it is very stable, especially at the beginning where there is no background music and only the protagonist's memories/monologues. Also, this movie wants to talk about an issue that no one has talked about, and that's what I'm going to argue about below.
Starting from the performance, I agree that the film wants to achieve a very "inhuman" effect in the performance of space. Just think about how many other space sci-fi aliens have arms and legs like humans, fight humans with weapons, or are on a mission to conquer a planet rather than explore, and I'm grateful for the 1 . First of all, there is no alien imagination. 2. It is not just about fighting and killing. The inner monologue and the astral spectacle are interspersed together, which is very poetic and transcendent. If the anthropocentric view leads to an extremely poor imagination, it might be better to avoid talking about something else.
However, such a "non-human" visual experience has always given me a very strange feeling, so that although the whole movie projects the protagonist's inner monologue onto the wonders of space, I feel that the two are becoming more and more separated. Why is this so? Because the perspective of this movie is the perspective of "I" (because it is the perspective of the male protagonist, it is referred to as me for short). Come to think of it, the entry point of the movie is really interesting, I-father; individual-country; earth-solar system (including the moon, Mars, Neptune) form a corresponding relationship. However, I believe that when the protagonist arrives at Neptune and sees his father on the last spaceship back, someone will ask: You have gone to Neptune with all your efforts, so you did this?
Yes, this sentence is not wrong, it should be asked, and it should be asked carefully, why should it be like this? We can find that what the director wants to talk about is actually a completely personal matter, and even extremely unscientific content begins to appear later, such as floating into the universe and swimming back, which can be completely interpreted as saying that the protagonist may be dead. It was the hallucination he saw before his death, but it was more proof that the movie was talking about a very personal matter from a very personal point of view. My interpretation of the theme of the film is that the protagonist's father represents a traditional viewpoint of human beings to explore space, while the protagonist represents a new viewpoint. Instead of having no feelings and exploring the resources and life of outer space by completing the mission at all costs, why not ask yourself if you have enough feelings for the people around you? Why not explore your own inner world?
But why?
Why do you go to war, and even use the universe, the purpose is to talk about how you grow as a person, how your mood changes, and to force the universe to be projected by you? Why do you do what you do, without any "inhuman" effect. Some people (destiny) are overwhelmed by all things in the universe (I believe everyone can feel this in "2001" and "Gravity" )? Why is this male protagonist not a random person, but the "chosen son" whose father did something big? Why is the individual-nation; earth-solar system relationship analogized by your father-son kinship in a family? Can you afford it? Do you really feel that your personal emotions are transcendent, how great, what can you represent, and why you don't want to represent, and what are the consequences of not wanting to represent? Why is it that both the country and the people in your peers have become "enemies", and your heart is not struggling with this? Why do you think that your main purpose of going to Neptune is to see your father, and you just downloaded years of research data from your father as if you were going back to the office with an umbrella (do you really understand the importance of this?)? Why do you not want to return to your own society in the end, to return to human beings, nature, the earth, but just your wife (which is family)? This "the outside world is dangerous, only home is the best" thinking makes me very uncomfortable. If the director wants to talk about the relationship between human psyche and the universe, it can be said in a different way-even if two random people are chosen as the protagonists, don’t take the emotion and memory of a certain individual as the only point of view, and don’t use this kind of protagonist center, personal center performance - there's also much more to explore than this film makes sense (see how Tarkovsky combines human psyche with the larger outside world). This movie is just another internalized "Superman" narrative. It's extremely, extremely American at its core. This is also the reason why I am very, very opposed to many overly personal artworks, because why should I care about your personal feelings? If your visual language is an extremely sensual, or groundbreaking visual language, that has a generalizing effect, but it's just not ugly right now.
Makoto Shinkai has this problem too, but he does it so much harder that it achieves a humorous effect to me, not so problematic.
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