It's poetry, so perhaps difficult to understand

Rating: 9/10 (8 October 2014)

For me, this is a profound film because of its simplicity in expressing that it is necessary to face oneself alone in order to experience the amazing connection that we have with each other and everything else in the universe, or life itself. Aside from the CGI, if you have experienced this facing yourself, you can't not appreciate this film.
Most of the negative criticism of the film has been that the story is full of clichés. Or that the CGI was off, or that the story is simply too simple. I remember living in Chile in 1963 and as a 15-year-old watching Fellini's 8 1/2. I nodded off. If someone had asked me then, I probably would have responded that it was boring, that I did not know what it meant. This film has something in common with Fellini, it's just more personal, and dare I say it, just as universal in its comment on being alive and human.
The tell here is that few comments I've read mentioned "corny."
In 1969 I was being asked to go to Vietnam. I could not do this. My father in his kindness paid $400 to retain a lawyer to advise me on what was involved in being a conscientious objector, and that was what I pursued. This involved writing an essay for the draft board to state for them why I could not do this. That experience resulted in some 17 pages from examining myself, going to the guts, spirit, soul, and was literally facing myself, looking in the mirror, and the most terrifying experience I've had in my life.
I am 66, have a wife, son, two grandkids. Viewed many films, read many books, experienced some stuff that might challenge anyone's imagination. But a child might know what this story is about.
It is not pleasant to be alone, at least for most of us, simply because we are connected with everyone and everything else. If we were not, there would be no responsibility and life would be ultimately boring.
I've seen films from the Angry Red Planet through 2001 to this one. I've watched the NASA videos, and so it is curious to me that some criticize the CGI.
The greatness of this story is that it is about you, about me. It is about what-if, and most about what now. You are there. You are going to die. What will you do with your time, whether hours or minutes, or seconds.
Space is a vacuum. Emptiness. I am certain that many of you have experienced this vacuum right here on the planet. What a wonderful thing that, in this story, some one of us who is a kind person with a good heart might experience the same thing and survive. Provides a bit of hope.
Greg McCormick Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania