By Michael Marano

Project Hail Mary is an antidote to dystopias, real and imagined.

Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Screening at AMC Boston Common 19, the Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, and other area cinemas.

Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary. Photo: Amazon MGM

A “scent memory” or a “Proustian memory” is the neurological term for when olfactory stimuli trigger strong recollection.

I’m not sure what the neurological term is for something that stimulates memories of a smell, but… for me, the new science fiction movie Project Hail Mary has that in spades. As I watched the movie, I was overwhelmed by a formative and foundational scent from my youth: the way new science fiction paperbacks smelled back when I was 11 to 13… that scent of clean, fresh paper and ink. Yeah, most of my reading material in those days was used paperbacks that I bought for less than a buck. They were infused with yellowing, old paper smells—maybe of Camels or Pall Malls, if the previous owner was a chain smoker. But now and then I could afford new science fiction books, and that heady smell is one I will forever associate with that “Gosh! Wow!” sense of wonder I felt reading Hal Clement, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, etc. back in the post-Apollo time when space exploration seemed an American birthright.

The premise of Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s bestselling novel, is that microscopic critters are eating the Sun, which will lead to a dimming that will wreck the Earth’s economy and ecosystem and result in global mass extinctions. Down-and-out high school science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling)is recruited by an international team of poindexters to help solve the problem. (We are definitely in a realm of pure science fiction — a reality where Ryan Gosling can’t get laid.) Grace eventually winds up alone on the spaceship Hail Mary… and yeah, it’s a groaner that the Hail Mary is carrying “Grace”… to investigate exactly why the star Tau Ceti is not falling prey to the same phenomenon that’s killing our Sun along with a number of other stars in our celestial neighborhood.

Like I said, “Gosh! Wow!”

And it’s hugely refreshing to have that nifty, teen nerd aesthetic in a major science fiction release. Why? Because, living in an actual dystopia, it’s kind of a bummer to sit through another SF premise like the latest Hunger Games installment, The Long Walk, Mickey 17, and that Running Man remake. All the dystopian shit I grew up on is no longer futuristic fantasy, it’s reportage. Ballard, Atwood, Butler, Lafferty, Dick, Russ, Tiptree, Aldiss, Brunner, Sheckley, Cronenberg. The cacotopian shit has all come true.

Project Hail Mary is an antidote to dystopias, real and imagined. The simple fact that it focuses on smart people, the best minds on earth cooperating on an international team, makes it a “fuck you” to Trumpist anti-intellectual, isolationist horseshit. There are utopian seeds in this flick, the first glimmers of a real Starfleet. A cultural glint of hope and optimism.

The great achievement of Project Hail Mary is how it presents its “Gosh! Wow!” ideas. While I was a kid, reading those wonderful-smelling, intoxicating, new SF paperbacks, I was overcome by a sense of wonder even though I knew was clunky storytelling. The narratives would stop dead, to allow Arthur C. Clarke or Larry Niven to jump on a soapbox and explain the physics of an ion drive or the workings of gravity near a neutron star. Project Hail Mary is an object lesson on how science fiction can deliver those “Gosh! Wow!” nuggets without stopping the narrative dead in its tracks. I haven’t read the book, so I’m not sure if Andy Weir does this, as well.

Project Hail Mary begins with the classic trope of “The Lonely Astronaut,” a Robinson Crusoe-like motif that harkens back to Twilight Zone episodes like “The Long Morrow,” Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, and Bester’s The Stars My Destination, and a bunch of others. Gosling’s Grace wakes up alone on the Hail Mary, his brain and memories swiss‑cheesed as a result of suspended animation. The genius of the storytelling here is that the filling in and reconstruction of Grace’s mind are so beautifully multi-tasked.

As Grace remembers who he is, he is also remembering all the backstory, exposition, and science that the audience needs to get up to speed in the narrative of Project Hail Mary. The mystery of what is killing the sun is revealed to us at the same time that Grace is figuring out the mystery of who he is. As a result, all these nuggets of “Gosh! Wow!” science fictional information, that ordinarily would (in other movies) be explained by a guy in a lab coat to a bunch of Pentagon officers, serve to illuminate character. And that is vital because so much of this film is, of necessity, focused on character—which is what gives Project Hail Mary so much damned heart.

Still, for all of this careful construction of character and exposition, Project Hail Mary has a vibe that feels kind of… improvised? There’s a looseness and easygoingness to the storytelling that makes it feel comfortable, even though so much of it takes place on a sterile spaceship light years from Earth. I refuse to give spoilers, but Project Hail Mary proves, irrefutably, that more science fiction films could use karaoke scenes. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired from that really bland Han Solo movie a few years back, reportedly for encouraging too much improvisation on set. We get a sense here of the Han Solo movie we could have had.

The downside to Project Hail Mary— and it’s a big one— is that it’s easily half an hour too long. Some judicious cutting and Thelma-Schoonmaker-type rearranging and restructuring of scenes could improve it hugely.

But that’s a quibble. The movie’s heart and sense of wonder make up for that excess 30 minutes. To say nothing of its shimmers of hope, which, these days especially, feels like something to be treasured.

Author, critic, and personal trainer Michael Marano got a stack of science fiction paperbacks as a Christmas gift from his older sister, and will forever associate the smell of a new copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama with learning about the mechanics of space travel.