The Martian

The Martian centers on a triangulation. 

One point is the vastness of the cosmos. Hence the astronomical distances and calculations and the recurring shot of Mark Watney (Matt Damon) as a minuscule dot moving across the red landscape of Mars.  

The other immensity is the astonishing achievement of human technology. This works on two levels: (i) the science demonstrated in the mechanics of space travel and communication and (ii) the equally impressive scientific effects in the composition of the film itself. Cinema as well as science is celebrated in the film’s dramatic visuals. When Martinez jokes that Mark is “just a botanist, not a real scientist,” the gag makes all of science an index of  mankind’s achievement. Of course, it’s Watney’s savvy as a botanist that enables him to grow potatoes in his own excrement on Mars and thus to survive. Botany is the science of earth, here the balance against the science of space. 

The third pole, in tension with these two immensities, is the worth of the individual human life. However impressive the realization of space travel and man’s new technology, the film’s essential value is  one person’s life. The team members vote unanimously to risk their own lives to save their colleague. In the rescue’s climax two space-suited bodies float through space, clinging to a slender sash until they can clutch each other. 

That teamwork extends outward to the national community — when all America (i.e., CNN and Times Square) gathers to root for Watney’s rescue — and internationally, when China volunteers its advanced propulsion system to save him. For the latter to happen, humanity has to transcend politics. Both countries’ scientists have to do an end run around their respective governments. 

In the more conventional version of teamwork, two of the astronauts end up marrying and having a baby. All the examples of connection, teamwork, community, are based on the value of the individual life, which should — but does not always, or even often, ok, maybe ever — transcend considerations of the collective. Fiction reminds us what we should make our reality.
   The film draws on earlier fiction forms as well. Watney’s ingenuity recalls Robinson Crusoe and the Tom Hanks and Spalding affair. Pillaging the unclaimed seas, Watney styles himself Blondbeard the Pirate. The individual life is what traditional fiction has celebrated and it remains the primary value even amid the impressiveness of ultramodern science and the newly fathomed reaches of the universe. Watney recites his log as a reminder that all the splendours we’re seeing are at least balanced and usually trumped by the value of the individual consciousness.