摘要：瑞恩·高斯林主演的《挽救计划》登陆大银幕，这位《登月第一人》的男主角再次飞向太空，饰演一位肩负拯救地球使命的中学教师。《纽约客》影评人贾斯汀·张犀利点评：导演菲尔·罗德和克里斯托弗·米勒试图用油嘴滑舌的俏皮话消解太空史诗的宏大与悲壮，却让这部改编自安迪·威尔小
有趣灵魂说
瑞恩·高斯林主演的《挽救计划》登陆大银幕，这位《登月第一人》的男主角再次飞向太空，饰演一位肩负拯救地球使命的中学教师。《纽约客》影评人贾斯汀·张犀利点评：导演菲尔·罗德和克里斯托弗·米勒试图用油嘴滑舌的俏皮话消解太空史诗的宏大与悲壮，却让这部改编自安迪·威尔小说的科幻片陷入“执意取悦观众却令人恼火”的尴尬境地。当高斯林与外星伙伴洛基的友谊温暖上演，我们不禁要问：在浩瀚宇宙中，幽默究竟是救赎还是逃避？
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The New Yorker ｜The Current Cinema
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“Project Hail Mary”: In Space, No One Should Hear Your Glib Jokes
《挽救计划》：在太空，没人该听到油嘴滑舌的笑话
In Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel, Ryan Gosling’s star power fuels an unlikely tale of far-flung friendship.
在菲尔·罗德和克里斯托弗·米勒对安迪·威尔小说的改编中，瑞恩·高斯林的明星魅力为这个讲述遥远星际友谊的离奇故事注入了活力。
By Justin Chang
Ryan Gosling stars as a molecular biologist turned middle-school teacher turned astronaut in Lord and Miller’s film. Illustration by Chuan Ming Ong
瑞恩·高斯林在罗德和米勒的电影中饰演一位从分子生物学家变成中学教师，再变成宇航员的角色。
2006年，当时二十多岁的瑞恩·高斯林主演了一部名为《半个尼尔森》的、风格冷峻的低预算剧情片，他在其中扮演一个因吸食可卡因毒瘾而步履维艰的中学教师。多年后，这位已成长为成熟巨星的演员飞向了太空；那部电影是尼尔·阿姆斯特朗的传记片《登月第一人》（2018年），影片在重构的1969年登月场景中达到高潮，催人泪下。如今，在《挽救计划》中，高斯林仿佛经历了一个轮回：他饰演赖兰·格雷斯，一位飞向太空的中学教师。当然，两者存在差异。格雷斯的目的地是距地球大约11.9光年的鲸鱼座τ星。他没有吸食可卡因；宇航员的生活本身就有足够多的"高潮"。（船上还有一批很快就被喝光的伏特加私藏。）不过，流泪是少不了的。
高斯林哭起来很动人，而他角色的旅程似乎注定要以眼泪收场
。
导演菲尔·罗德和克里斯托弗·米勒，以及编剧德鲁·戈达德，显然也希望我们能为此洒下几滴热泪。他们同样想让我们开怀大笑，但他们的意图常常笨拙地相互冲突，显得生硬而不协调。影片开头，格雷斯发现自己正在哀悼两位在旅途中丧生、留下他孤身一人的队友——遥李杰（肯·梁饰）和奥莱夏·伊柳欣娜（米拉娜·薇恩翠饰）。这是阴郁的情节——本该如此，如果不是因为这里和其他地方跳动着一脉幽默感，将失落的痛苦完全挡在门外的话。你看，格雷斯刚刚从一个持续数年的诱导昏迷中醒来。他看起来像个邮包炸弹客，笨手笨脚，四处摸索，几乎记不起自己的名字、任务或已故的同事。他发表的零碎悼词，感觉半是悲伤半是玩笑，而且颇有些敷衍了事。想想克莱尔·德尼那部颇为冷峻的太空歌剧《黑洞迷情》（2018年），其中另一位宇航员（罗伯特·帕丁森饰）处理掉死去的队友时，仪式感要少得多，远没有那么隆重。他知道自己孤身一人。格雷斯则不然，他似乎总能察觉到电影银幕另一边的观众，正等着被娱乐。
《挽救计划》是我近来见过的最执意取悦观众、却最令人恼火的电影。它用易于消化的方式呈现了一个复杂的科幻情节，常常佐以一针见血的俏皮话或滑稽的跌倒作为配菜 。这个标题和俏皮古怪的基调都源自安迪·威尔2021年的小说，与原著一样，电影也利用格雷斯的暂时性失忆作为叙事结构。我们在过去和现在之间来回切换，随着他被一点点唤醒的记忆，逐渐填补上他的背景故事。影片早期，我们闪回到地球，格雷斯正在教授初中科学；他最近的一堂课是关于声音频率的，你可以放心，这会在电影的期中考试中出现。空气中弥漫着一种末日将至前的寒意。太阳正被一种名为"噬星体"的、渴求能量的微生物吞噬，由此产生的全球变冷威胁着要消灭地球上大部分人口。这不只是局部问题；噬星体正在吞噬各处恒星，就像蚂蚁在星际野餐会上一样。宇宙将要熄灯。
这时，伊娃·斯特拉特（桑德拉·惠勒饰）登场了，她是一位带着刺骨半笑和钢铁意志的政府官员，将格雷斯拉回了顶尖科学的世界——那是他多年前因在学术界失意而离开的地方。斯特拉特是"挽救计划"的负责人，这是一项全球性的救援行动，旨在为时过晚之前阻止恒星吞噬者。（
影片最不经意间触动人心的细节之一，就是它对国际合作和称职领导的平实描绘。这才叫科幻呢
。）将派遣一名宇航员去研究鲸鱼座τ星，这颗恒星似乎对噬星体感染有抵抗力。斯特拉特需要调遣世界上最好的头脑，而格雷斯就是其中之一。但他不愿参与其中，而闪回镜头揭示了他如何让步的漫长而不可思议的弧光——这个固执、自嘲、拥有分子生物学博士学位却毫无航天经验的怪人，最终如何迷失在太空，双手紧张地握着世界的命运。
幸运的是，在创作小说时，威尔意识到他笔下的格雷斯一个人对于我们来说还不够。于是，在靠近鲸鱼座τ星的地方，一艘巨大的外星飞船赫然显现。在罗德和米勒的改编中，这是一艘令人印象深刻的细长型飞船——由一种叫做"塞克诺耐特"的物质制成，不过我可能会猜是干意大利面——你可以从外星人的手工艺中，辨别出与罗德和米勒的《乐高大电影》（2014年）中同样的异想天开的游戏感。一座桥梁从飞船延伸至另一艘飞船，格雷斯遇到了一个矮胖、无脸、多足的生物，就像砂岩做成的甲壳动物。他们的初次相遇发生在一堵透明墙的两侧，只需一段即兴的马克斯兄弟式滑稽表演——格雷斯轻柔地跳舞，外星人跟着做——就足以确认他们彼此没有恶意。
这个生物的语言主要由轻柔、高亢的吱吱声组成，难以但并非无法解码，格雷斯利用一台笔记本电脑，设法建立了一个基本的交流系统。终于，这个由木偶师詹姆斯·奥尔蒂斯精彩地赋予生命（有着滑稽的机器音和细碎的移动）的外星人可以讲述他的故事了。他是来自行星埃里德的工程师，该星球同样受到噬星体的威胁，和格雷斯一样，他也是自己任务的唯一幸存者。于是一段美好的友谊开始了，一段可能拯救他们俩所在星球的友谊。"我叫你洛基吧，"格雷斯说。想必，叫"E.T."就太明显了。
几乎每一部电影中的太空航行，无论去往多么遥远的地方，都会触及熟悉的领域。如果这部影片让你想起克里斯托弗·诺兰的《星际穿越》（2014年），那并不奇怪：《挽救计划》远没有那么烧脑，但它也有不少诺兰式的离心力场景和概念悖论。（一个有趣的循环反讽：格雷斯的飞船正是由噬星体驱动的。毁灭地球的元凶同时也是拯救地球的动力。）更明显的回声来自《火星救援》（2015年），那是另一个由戈达德改编自安迪·威尔小说的、关于一位被遗弃宇航员的诙谐故事。但那位导演是雷德利·斯科特，他精简的专业性恰如其分地控制住了喜剧与宇宙之间的平衡。
罗德和米勒是喧闹的喜剧演员，擅长夸张和荒诞，这感觉源于他们频繁的动画工作。（他们编剧并执导了2009年的《天降美食》，并联合制作了极为成功的《蜘蛛侠：平行宇宙》系列。）即便是在《挽救计划》这样的真人实景奇观中，两位导演也瞄准了未知的滑稽宏大领域，仿佛他们决心以最不严肃的方式，来戏剧化地呈现最严肃的人类事业。当洛基暂时搬进地球人的飞船——因无法适应新的大气环境，他把自己藏在一个十二面体形状的"球"里——他鄙视格雷斯邋遢的习惯和其他人类的缺点。反过来，格雷斯在一系列将发回地球的视频日记中，抱怨他的新室友。"他越来越让我喜欢了，"格雷斯最终承认，并补充道，"至少他没在我体内生长。"他的同伴则用更简洁的方式表达了同样的情感："洛基开心不孤单。"
随着障碍、逆转和濒死体验的累积，电影膨胀到两个半小时——对于一部描绘行星毁灭迫在眉睫的史诗来说，你可能觉得这并不算长。
但观众的好感是一种珍贵而不稳定的资源，《挽救计划》的轻浮却鲁莽地挥霍着它
。因此，我们更有理由感激饰演斯特拉特的桑德拉·惠勒，她以最好的方式不断将情节拉回地球。惠勒那种极度干涩的内敛毫不费力地引人发笑，而高斯林更为刻意夸张的滑稽表演则做不到这一点。斯特拉特与格雷斯之间那种粗鲁但不失善意的别扭关系，似乎预示着他未来与洛基的互动：他们同样必须学会说同一种语言。有一晚，出现了一个短暂却升华的连接时刻：斯特拉特在酒吧与同事放松警惕时，深情翻唱了哈里·斯泰尔斯的《时代的标志》。你不得不怀疑电影制作者是否受到了这位演员在《托尼·厄德曼》（2016年）中精彩表演的启发，在那部电影中，她同样将卡拉OK时刻变成了情感启示的素材。"我们得离开这里，"惠勒唱道，确实如此。她超凡脱俗。♦
In 2006, Ryan Gosling, then in his twenties, starred in a tough-minded, low-budget drama called “Half Nelson,” in which he played a middle-school teacher hobbled by a crack addiction. Years later, the actor, now a fully fledged star, blasted off into space; the film was the Neil Armstrong drama “First Man” (2018), and it climaxed with a weepy reconstruction of the 1969 moon landing. Now, in “Project Hail Mary,” Gosling has come full circle: he is Ryland Grace, a middle-school teacher who blasts off into space. There are differences, to be sure. Grace’s destination is the star Tau Ceti, roughly 11.9 light-years from Earth. No crack is smoked; an astronaut’s life has enough highs. (There’s also an onboard vodka stash that doesn’t last long.) Weeping, though, you can count on. Gosling is a beautiful crier, and his character’s journey seems destined to end in tears.
The directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and the screenwriter, Drew Goddard, clearly want us to shed a few of our own. They also want to make us laugh, and their instincts are often at lumpy cross-purposes. Early on, Grace finds himself mourning his two crewmates, Yáo Li-Jie (Ken Leung) and Olesya Ilyukhina (Milana Vayntrub), who have perished mid-journey, leaving him all alone. Grim stuff—or it would be, if not for a vein of humor that throbs here and elsewhere, keeping the full sting of loss at bay. Grace, you see, has just emerged from a years-long induced coma. Looking like the Unabomber, he bumbles and flails about, barely able to remember his name, his mission, or his late colleagues. He delivers patchy eulogies that feel half sad, half jokey, and more than a little half-hearted. Consider Claire Denis’s rather chillier space opera, “High Life” (2018), in which another astronaut (Robert Pattinson) jettisoned his dead crewmates with far less ceremony. He knew he was alone. Not so Grace, who always seems aware of an audience on the other side of the movie screen, waiting to be entertained.
“Project Hail Mary” is the most exasperatingly insistent crowd-pleaser I’ve seen in a while. It serves up an elaborate science-fiction plot in easily digestible bites, often with a juicy one-liner or a side order of pratfall. Both the title and the quippy-wonky tone come from an Andy Weir novel, from 2021, and, like the book, the film uses Grace’s temporary amnesia as a structuring device. We are jerked between past and present as his backstory gets filled in, one jogged memory at a time. Early on, we flash back to Earth, where Grace is teaching junior-high science; his latest lesson is about sound frequencies, and you can rest assured that it will appear on the film’s midterm exam. There’s a pre-apocalyptic chill in the air. The sun is being devoured by energy-hungry microbes, called Astrophage, and the resulting cooling threatens to wipe out much of Earth’s population. This isn’t just a local problem; the Astrophage are eating stars everywhere, like ants at an intergalactic picnic. Lights out for the universe.
Enter Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), a government official with a barbed half smile and a will of iron, who drags Grace back to the world of top-flight science, which he left behind years before, after flaming out of academia. Stratt is the head of Project Hail Mary, a global rescue effort to stop the star-eaters before it’s too late. (One of the film’s most casually poignant touches is its matter-of-fact vision of international coöperation and competent leadership. Talk about science fiction.) A crew will be sent to study Tau Ceti, a star that seems resistant to Astrophage infection. Stratt needs the world’s best minds at her disposal, and Grace is one of them. But he’s reluctant to get involved, and flashbacks reveal the long, improbable arc of how he relents—how this stubborn, self-deprecating oddball, with a doctorate in molecular biology but no astronaut experience, wound up lost in space, with the fate of the world in his nervous grip.
Mercifully, in writing the novel, Weir realized that his Grace was not sufficient for us. And so, not far from Tau Ceti, an enormous alien spacecraft looms into view. In Lord and Miller’s adaptation, it’s an impressively elongated affair—made from a substance called xenonite, though I’d have guessed dry spaghetti noodles—and you can discern, in the aliens’ handiwork, the same whimsical sense of play that animated Lord and Miller’s “Lego Movie” (2014). A bridge extends from ship to ship, and Grace meets a squat, faceless, many-legged creature, like a crustacean made of sandstone. Their first encounter occurs on opposite sides of a transparent wall, and all it takes is an impromptu Marx Brothers routine—Grace gently dances, the alien follows suit—to confirm that they mean each other no harm.
The creature’s language consists largely of gentle, high-pitched squeals, difficult but not impossible to decode, and Grace, using a laptop, manages to fashion a rudimentary system of communication. At last, the alien—brought wonderfully to life, with an amusingly robotic voice and skittery movements, by the puppeteer James Ortiz—can tell his story. He is an engineer from the planet Erid, which is also threatened by Astrophage, and, like Grace, he is the lone survivor of his mission. And so begins a beautiful friendship, one that might save both their planets. “I’m gonna call you Rocky,” Grace says. Presumably, E.T. would have been too obvious.
Nearly every cinematic space voyage, however far flung, brushes up against familiar terrain. If this one reminds you of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (2014), that’s no surprise: “Project Hail Mary” is nowhere near as mind-bending, but it has its share of Nolan-esque centrifugal set pieces and conceptual paradoxes. (One nicely circular irony: Grace’s ship is powered by Astrophage. The agent of Earth’s destruction is also the engine of its salvation.) Even more obvious are the echoes of “The Martian” (2015), another wryly funny tale of an astronaut cast adrift that was adapted by Goddard from a Weir novel. But the director there was Ridley Scott, and his streamlined professionalism kept the comic and the cosmic judiciously in check.
Lord and Miller are boisterous funnymen, with a flair for the exaggerated and the outlandish that feels born of their frequent work in animation. (They wrote and directed “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” from 2009, and co-produced the hugely successful “Spider-Verse” franchise.) Even within the live-action spectacle of “Project Hail Mary,” the directors aim for uncharted realms of goofball grandeur, as if they were bent on dramatizing the most serious human enterprise in the least serious manner possible. When Rocky temporarily moves into the earthling ship—unable to handle the new atmosphere, he shields himself inside a dodecahedron-shaped “ball”—he disdains Grace’s untidy habits and other human shortcomings. Grace, in turn, grouses about his new roomie in a series of video diaries, which will be sent back to Earth. “He’s growing on me,” Grace eventually admits, adding, “At least he’s not growing inme.” His companion expresses a more succinct version of the sentiment: “Rocky happy not alone.”
And so we find ourselves in an interspecies buddy comedy: “Smart and Smarter.” The buddies’ plan involves the retrieval of amoeba specimens from a celestial body orbiting Tau Ceti. This planet is a striking piece of production design, with a nicely retro matte-style finish, though it does have a gaseous swirl of pink and green that looks a bit like Planet “Wicked.” Lord and Miller, working with the cinematographer Greig Fraser, avoid the conventional visual language of the prestige space epic, with its sterile surfaces and zero-gravity tracking shots. When Grace first awakens on his ship, the film cuts hectically around, above, and below him, as if to approximate his mental and physical disorientation. But even after the grogginess wears off, there’s little sense of flow to the images; they don’t build or move hypnotically from one to the next, and they suggest a curious reluctance, on the part of the filmmakers, to maximize the possibilities of the big screen. Even their vision of outer space seldom imparts the sense of a terrifying, unknowable vastness.
As obstacles, reversals, and near-death experiences accumulate, the film balloons to two and a half hours—hardly overlong, you might think, for an epic of looming planetary destruction. But the audience’s good will is a precious, unstable resource, and the flippancy of “Project Hail Mary” expends it recklessly. All the more reason to be grateful for Sandra Hüller as Stratt, who keeps pulling the proceedings back to Earth in the best possible way. Hüller’s bone-dry reserve is effortlessly amusing, in a way that Gosling’s more strained antics are not, and Stratt’s prickly bond with Grace, brusque but not unkind, seems to foreshadow his future interactions with Rocky: they, too, must learn to speak the same language. There’s a fleeting yet sublime moment of connection one night, when Stratt, lowering her guard at a bar with her colleagues, croons a gorgeous cover of Harry Styles’s “Sign of the Times.” You have to wonder if the filmmakers were inspired by the actor’s great performance in “Toni Erdmann” (2016), in which she similarly turned a karaoke moment into the stuff of emotional revelation. “We gotta get away from here,” Hüller sings, and rightly so. She’s out of this world. ♦
来源：小夭看天下