BEFORE: Sandra Hüller carries over again from "The Zone of Interest" and I'd never heard of this film until a few days ago, but it can serve as my path back to U.S. made movies, because it's got a mix of actors from France, Germany, Russia and one notable Hollywood actor. That's good enough for my purposes, it's like that film "Okja" I watched a few years ago that made it possible for me to watch "Parasite" and then link back to the main chain.
THE PLOT: An astronaut prepares for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station.
AFTER: TGIF, I've been on this very weird schedule for the last two weeks, because of the winter holidays and where both Christmas and New Year's fell, on Wednesdays?? WTF, how can you have a holiday on a Wednesday, how do you even make a long weekend out of that? So it's been one day of work, two days off, then one more day of work, three days off, one more day of work, two more days off, and so on. I have not spent this much time at home since the pandemic ended - I've been staying up too late, sleeping too long, getting up at noon and asking my wife if I should grab us some lunch. Breakfast, what's that? JK, we had a breakfast out at a diner one day, but it was probably lunchtime when we ordered it.
So I worked today, now another two days off. I had two strong dark beers when I came home, so I'm still feeling the effects, I'll try to muddle through. If tomorrow's post is late then that means I crashed right after posting this, and slept on through.
This movie came out of the blue, it's really only here because it links back from foreign films to material that is taking up space on my DVR or DVDs - eventually. Actually it links to a film that was screened in the Tuesday night film appreciation class that I usually work (nobody else at the theater wants to work Tuesday nights for some reason, no wait, there is a reason, the professor who hosts the event is a bit difficult, and there are many seniors who need assistance into the theatre. I'll take the shift, no problem, bring it on, it's like a standing gig every Tuesday night during the school year and I'm fine with it.). Plus I get to see peeks of some current or even upcoming films and I can just add them to my list.
But not "Proxima", I'd never heard of it until I was desperately seeking a link back from the two foreign films that I started my year with, and in a perfect world if everything goes well in January this will also lead me to "Dune: Part Two", "Joker: Folie a Deux" and "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" - also "Fly Me to the Moon", which is kind of on the same topic, only that film is a comedy and this one isn't. This is also a multi-culti sort of film, made in France and Germany, but with a cast that also includes some Americans and I think some Russians as well. It's just the sort of thing I need to get back to my home turf and U.S. made films.
But really, who's in a hurry? We're going to get there, plenty of (I assume) middling films this month that are just taking up space on my Netflix queue, really in addition to clearing space on my DVR I should be equally devoted to those Netflix films that have been languishing at the bottom of my list, because if I wait too long they could scroll off Netflix and then I'll have to hunt them down somewheres else. Would rather watch them on Netflix, which is easier, I just go through the Sony Playstation and I don't have to risk my data getting stolen from some pirate site on the dark web. Am I rambling? I think I'm rambling, must be the beer talking. Did I mention I read a book written by Seth Rogen, about his weird encounters with f. mous people? It was called "Yearbook" and it was a quick read, I think I read it on the way back from North Carolina and he was probably half-stoned when he wrote it - hell, he was probably half-stoned when everything he wrote about happened. But that's OK, it's all legal now.
Anyway, "Proxima", it's not a science-fiction story about astronauts, more like science facts, it details the training that astronauts need to undergo before they spend time on the I.S.S., and that's not just physical training but also mental training. If they're going to spend a year apart from their loved ones, that's not going to be easy, so yeah, even though they can still communicate long distance with friends and family, it's still going to take some discipline, and getting used to living alone, but with other people around them. (Yeah, that's right.). I've been living with one domestic partner or another since 1991, except for 6 months in 1996 that I did not enjoy very much. If I had to live alone again I might go crazy - but yet some people seem to prefer it, and some of those people become astronauts.
This was released in 2019 but it seems very timely, because the U.S. has two people right now who are "stuck in space" at the I.S.S. beginning in June of last year because there were issues with the Boeing Starliner that brought them there, it was deemed unsafe to return them to Earth, so they're there until March 2025 at least, possibly longer, even though they've scrolled off the news cycle, they are still there and doing OK. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are their names, and they seem to be doing fine, they're assisting with experiments and have been watering the plants, vacuuming the air vents and even fixing a broken toilet, it's like they suddenly have all the time to do all the chores around the house that they've been meaning to get to, only they're also in orbit and they see 16 sunrises every day. Ms. Williams is from Massachusetts originally, just like me, and is making the best of the situation, some time away from her husband, a former Navy aviator who is taking care of their dogs at their home in Houston.
Mr. Wilmore, meanwhile, is missing his daughter's senior year of high school, but as we see in "Proxima", certain sacrifices have to be made if this is the career you've chosen for yourself. Sarah Loreau has to be away from her eight-year-old daughter for a whole year, and you just never get that time back, do you? So in addition to undergoing extensive training, she has to make arrangements for her daughter to live with her ex-husband, who also works as an astro-physicist, so at least he understands - if you get selected for a space mission, you put your life on hold because this was the goal, this is what you dreamed of when you were a kid, looking up at the stars. Well, OK, some people dreamed about being astronauts and others dreamed about being astronomers or astrophysicists, but hey, to each their own.
Sarah also has to endure the American captain of the mission, who would actually prefer to replace her with another man, perhaps he is worried about spending time in space with a woman, and he might be tempted to cheat on his wife, it's tough to say. Or maybe he's just a male chauvinist. I couldn't tell if the film was suggesting there was some kind of spark between Mike and Sarah or not, or maybe it was a one-way attraction. Either way, training teaches Sarah that there is no such thing as a "perfect" astronaut, just as there is no such thing as a "perfect" mother, instead we all get the one(s) we have and we have to grow up with them and then all do the best we can.
I'm pleasantly surprised that the film didn't force Sarah and Mike together as some kind of relationship of convenience, and I'm also pleasantly surprised that she made it to space, in spite of the misogyny she encountered from the American mission captain and also the Russian trainers. There were probably a half dozen reasons to scrub her from the mission, including the fact that she broke her quarantine to show her daughter the rocket - and for some reason there were no repercussions for this, which almost doesn't seem right, except for the fact that finally her daughter seemed to understand WHY she had to spend a year without her mother in her daily life. Well, suck it up, buttercup, because not every kid gets to be with their parents 24/7. My dad worked as a truck driver and he was always up early and out the door after a cup of coffee, well before I woke up for school. Then when he came home he would sack out on the couch, so unless it was the weekend and we went to church, I barely saw him, and this went on for YEARS that way. Meanwhile my mother was teaching elementary school music in the next town over (thank GOD not in the town we lived in...) and so I can't name one school function before my high school graduation that either of my parents went to. And yet somehow I survived.
Sometimes Mommy AND Daddy need to work so you can maybe afford to go to college one day. So please, get over it. Yes, I realize most kids' Mommy or Daddy don't spend a year on a Space Station, but the principle is the same.
What year is this supposed to take place? Because the characters were all talking about the upcoming Mission to Mars, or building some kind of space station on the moon to launch to Mars from there. My wife and I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston and we got a look at the proposed capsules that would take astronauts to Mars, but that was back in 2018. It's over six years later, and when is that Mars mission happening, exactly? I just Googled it, and it looks like it won't be until the early 2030's at least. Come ON, what is the damn hold-up?
Also starring Eva Green (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Matt Dillon (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Zelie Boulant, Aleksey Fateev, Lars Eidinger (last seen in "High Life"), Trond-Erik Vassal, Nancy Tate (last heard in "On the Line"), Gregoire Colin, Igor Filippov, Svetlana Nekhoroshikh, Anna Sherbinina, Vitaly Jay, Thomas Pesquet.
RATING: 6 out of 10 personal items (placed in a shoe-box sized container)
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