Let’s begin with the giant spider in the room.
No, not an elephant. And perhaps, technically, not a spider—though with its eight legs and six eyes and pair of furry fangs, it certainly looks the part. And while it’s smaller than an elephant, it’s quite large for a spider—perhaps four feet long, from stem-to-stern. Stretch out its legs, and it’d be quite a bit bigger.
But the spider seems kind enough, and he’s certainly smarter than your average arachnid. He’s a traveler of sorts—one from a far distant planet, eager to learn more about humankind. But he’s also running away from the vicious Gorumpeds that attacked his planet.
It’s not really a room, either. It’s a spacecraft, manned by just one man. His name is Jakub. Like the spider, he’s a traveler. And like the spider, he’s running away, too.
Four years ago, a mysterious pinkish-purplish cloud appeared in the sky. Scientists quickly determined it hovered somewhere just past Jupiter. But what was it? And why was it there? No one knew. But someone had to find out, right? So the Czech Republic—not a big name in space travel, admittedly, but one with a can-do sort of spirit—asked for volunteers for this dangerous, long, incredibly lonely mission.
Jakub raised his hand. Never mind the danger, never mind the loneliness. Never mind that he was leaving his pregnant wife, Lenka, behind.
Six months later, Jakub is nearing the mysterious cloud. Six months later, Lenka’s about to give birth. Six months later, Lenka’s leaving Jakub … six months after he left her.
“I love you, but people change,” she says on a message sent through their communication channel, Czechconnect. “And if you don’t let them change, they die. I have to leave you. I’m so sorry that it has to be now.”
Jakub’s ground crew intercepts the message, knowing it’d be a potential mission-wrecking distraction.
But Jakub knows that something’s wrong. Lenka isn’t trying to contact him. When he tries to reach her, she won’t answer.
And let’s be honest: Jakub knew before he left that their relationship was in trouble. The space between them was growing even then—empty, silent, lifeless. Much like space itself.
Yes, Jakub is running away. Away from his past, away from his own guilt, away from Lenka. Away, perhaps, from even himself.
But then this giant spider shows up. “Your loneliness intrigued me,” he says. And Hanuš—the name that Jakub soon gives him—won’t stop asking questions. Won’t stop dredging up old memories. Won’t stop trying to … help.
A famous science fiction film once told us that in space, no one can hear you scream. But here—on this spacecraft 500 million kilometers from home—a giant spider might hear you cry.
The name Hanuš is taken from the legendary clockmaker who created Prague’s famous astronomical clock. “I’m not sure if Hanuš built it or if someone else did,” Jakub tells him. “Or if Hanuš even exists.” It’s a fitting name, given that Jakub is uncertain whether the spider truly exists, either.
But in the context of Spaceman, perhaps that doesn’t much matter. Hanuš—whoever or whatever he is—serves as a sensitive counselor and eight-legged sage. He’s able to explore moments from Jakub’s memories, and he forces Jakub to face them, too. Hanuš understands it’s a painful journey, but an important one.
That exploration centers on Jakub and Lenka’s marriage—the very concept of which is bewildering to Hanuš. “Why commit to a promise if it can readily be broken?” he asks Jakub. “What purpose does such a commitment serve?” But as the film goes on, we see hints of marriage’s purpose and power. Jakub comes to understand that this trip into space—a trip that he thought was so important—is a shadow compared to what he had with Lenka, and what he wishes he might have again.
One can certain debate the morality of keeping Lenka’s message from Jakub. But the ground crew does what it can to patch up Jakub’s and Lenka’s relationship, too. And when it looks as though the mission will fail, Jakub’s primary on-the-surface helpmate, Peter, begs Jakub to forget the mission and save himself.
If Spaceman was a symphony, its cinematic halls would be filled with the sound of spiritual import. As such, this story plays with themes of sin, commitment and the meaning of life.
But outside of a few glimpses of religious paintings and icons in a retreat for pregnant women, you won’t find overt references to Christian faith. Spaceman may offer plenty of conversation starters, but its sense of spirituality is pretty mixed.
Hanuš tells us early on that the mysterious pink-purple cloud is as close to supernatural transcendence as the film gets. (Later, in an interesting biblical echo, the spider says, “It is the beginning. And the ending. Every vibration of all time, it is contained here … Every promise, every heartbreak, every atonement.”) Hanuš himself seems to be impossibly old, and Jakub asks if the spider is, in fact, immortal. “Everything that begins must end, skinny human,” the spider says. “Even the universe itself.”
We hear how Jakub is using the trip to try to atone for his father’s “sins”; we learn later that the man was an informant for the Communist government of what was then Czechoslovakia. And later, Jakub comes to understand that he has his own sins to atone for, as well. Hanuš calls consuming coffee—or as he says, “hot bean water”—a “sacred ritual.”
The film occasionally nods in the direction of the Czech opera Rusalka, the story of the titular water nymph (and daughter of a water goblin) who falls in love with a mortal man.
In a flashback, Lenka strips off her clothes and dives into a swimming pool in her underwear. We later see an older, pregnant Lenka in a modest bathing suit. Lenka and Jakub kiss sometimes in flashback sequences.
A painting of a bare-breasted woman (though her breasts are barely visible) hangs in a pregnancy retreat. We catch the swiftest of glimpses of a naked man. But, as we’ll see in the section below, it’s not meant to be titillating at all.
[Note: Spoilers are contained in this section.]
Hanuš probes memories of Jakub’s childhood, and we learn that Jakub was the son of a pig farmer. We see a pig being slaughtered—blood gushing out of the animal’s throat—but those images merge with an even more unsettling scene. As we hear the sounds of animals apparently dying, a young Jakub walks in his father’s barn as a tortured, nude man kneels in the background, with what appear to be iron clamps fastened to his chest.
Jakub tells Hanuš that his father, a communist informant, “was a good man who did bad things” and was ultimately “killed for what he believed was the truth.” (In another flashback, we see the barn burning, and it’s suggested that Jakub’s dad died in that blaze.)
We learn that Jakub was thrown into a river because of his father’s activities—and it’s suggested that he nearly drowned until someone fished him out.
During the space voyage, Jakub apparently dreams of a creature crawling underneath the skin of his face (we see it distort the skin as it scurries about) before it ultimately finds his nose (where we see a leg shoot out) and his mouth (where the thing—a spider—pries itself out of). Jakub wakes up, terrified, and shortly thereafter he discovers Hanuš.
Jakub initially takes refuge in a spacesuit, but Hanuš reassures him that he will “neither consume nor contaminate you.” And he seems to be as good as his word. But the spider doesn’t like to be touched (“it is not customary for my tribe,” he explains). And when Jakub does reach out to touch Hanuš, the spider throws him back and holds him in place.
We learn shortly thereafter that Hanuš was not entirely truthful about fleeing the Gorumpeds: He’s actually infected with them already, and they’re killing him. With labored breath, he tells Jakub that they will consume him, as they did everyone else. He proves to be right—and we see it.(Jakub’s own life is imperiled, too.)
This is Lenka’s second pregnancy: Her first one ended in miscarriage when, again, Jakub was away. (It happens as Lenka uses a treadmill, and we see her collapse as blood stains the leg of her exercise pants.) Learning this, Hanuš turns accusatory. “Again she is with your child, and you are not there,” he says. “What for? The pain that it causes, is it of value to you?”
Nine f-words and three s-words. We also hear two uses of “h—.”
After a particularly difficult conversation, Jakub gets drunk aboard the spacecraft. We see him spinning around in zero gravity, half unconscious and holding a bottle of vodka that leaks liquor—floating in the air like tiny balls.
Jakub also laps up medicinal drops to help him sleep (though they don’t always work). In flashback, he and Lenka drink wine.
Nutella (or some other brand of hazelnut/cocoa spread) serves as something of an emotional analgesic. Hanuš develops a taste for it, especially when he taps into some of Jakub’s most difficult memories. “Your memories are making me … depressed?” he says. “But the spread made of hazelnut did make my realization seem less unpleasant.”
Jakub is struggling with a faulty, noisy toilet on board his spacecraft: He says it “screams,” and it is indeed quite noisy. (We see Jakub sitting on the apparatus, apparently doing his business, though nothing critical is seen.) Ironically, it was the noise that attracted Hanuš to the craft in the first place. And when Jakub sees Hanuš cradling the tube that essentially serves as a urinal, Jakub allows him to hang out in the bathroom, “for soothing purposes.”
(Jakub later asks Peter at ground control as to whether there’s a camera installed in the bathroom. Peter admits there is one—for “safety purposes.”)
We see Jakub pitch a product called Antiquease, which brands itself as the official nausea medication for the mission. Hanuš sneezes all over Jakub’s space helmet.
In her message to Jakub, Lenka complains of how they don’t connect anymore, alluding to the long silences as they try to talk on the Czechconnect. If they don’t even talk—if they just listen to the silence over the only tangible thing that tethers them—what’s the point?
Commissioner Tuma hears the message. She decides to not forward the message to Jakub, and instead she visits Lenka herself. And after a rather disappointing visit, during which she discovers that Lenka’s still determined to leave her husband, Tuma offers one more thought.
“The silence is the point,” she says. “The two of you, together. Silent. Lost. Afraid. In the dark. Holding on. That is the point.”
Based on Jaroslav Kalfar’s book Spaceman of Bohemia, Spaceman is as touching a movie you’ll ever see that features a gigantic space spider. It’s a thoughtful reflection on loneliness—and how so often we isolate ourselves. We recoil when we should embrace. We shut down when we know better. We don’t need a spaceship to seal ourselves off from those who love us: Closed bedroom doors, late nights working, folded arms at the dinner table do the trick just fine.
Spaceman deviates from the novel quite a bit, and can be hard to see the story’s Czech roots in the work of Adam Sandler and, especially, Carey Mulligan (who never drops her velvety British accent). But its notes of sin and atonement, redemption and hope, worked for me. We can all feel so lost, so alone and so adrift at times.
Christians, too. Maybe Christians especially. Our broken world can be filled with so much pain, and that brokenness fills us, too. And so, in the darkness, in the silence, in that sense of desperation that led Peter to say, “Lord, where else could we go?” we pray. We reach through the silence to touch our Creator. We cut through the darkness to find each other.
As profound as that message may be, Spaceman shares its own space with some significant issues. The movie’s language would be enough to push it over the R-rating. And if that wasn’t there, a brief-but-brutal scene of slaughter and torture might be. A miscarriage is depicted that might be triggering for some, and the whole affair often feels melancholy.
Still, this movie can also remind viewers of the importance of honesty, connection and intimacy. And it just might make you think a bit more kindly toward the spiders that wind up in your bathtub.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
