What Would YOU Do?

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2017)

I don't understand all of the bashing of this movie. Many people seem to focus on the "creepiness" of Pratt's character, how his actions were unethical and criminal (this is true), and the general ridiculousness of how Pratt originally arrived at his initial situation (e.g., a spaceship with no contingency capabilities for hibernation, a ship for over 5,000 people with only one Auto Doc, no alarms which would wake crew members, no rotating shift of engineering and crew members to keep constant watch on a ship carrying that many passengers while navigating through the deep vacuum of space, etc.). I agree with most of this, but I think many people miss the point that the story was trying to tell. This wasn't a movie about the theoretical accuracy of space travel, or that gave much thought to the principles of engineering design or safety during space travel (especially for a 120 year trip), and it wasn't intended to.
My view is that this story was centrally about a moral dilemma, and the human condition. If you were on a journey like the one Pratt's character experienced, and to your horror, you woke up with 90 years left to go knowing that there was nothing you could do to go back to sleep, nothing you could to do escape, and you would die alone without any possibility of human contact or connection for the rest of your life, what would you do? One of the things stories do is force us to confront the human condition. Good stories force us to think about what we would do. If you were in Pratt's character's situation, what would you do? Would you be able to live for 50-60 years without another human being to talk to or experience your life with? Would you be able to survive the rest of your life trapped on a spaceship, repeating the same unfulfilling and meaningless activities over and over again without anyone else to keep you company or share your day with? Would you be able to resist the temptation of waking up another human being so that you would be able to escape your loneliness? Would you be able to take the moral high ground and be brave enough to end your life and escape your misery instead of giving into the temptation of rousing another human being but, at the same time, knowing you are condemning them to your same fate? We all would like to think we would take the moral and ethical high ground, but none of us will ever know until we are faced with that situation.
To me, this is a movie about the human desire for love and companionship (not sex as some people are ridiculously making this out to be), and sometimes that may lead desperate and lonely people to do unethical things. I feel like most people are missing that message. Exploring the fragility of someone's morals when tested in an extreme circumstance is an interesting theme. People vastly overestimate their ability to deal with traumatic events. Self preservation is a powerful thing, and so is loneliness. We can see Pratt's character going through the trauma of contemplating suicide. We can see Pratt's character going through the moral and ethical dilemma of whether or not he should wake Lawrence's character up, and once he does, he panics and feels the wrong in that action in his gut; he feels guilty and ashamed, and this is apparent with his character for many of his interactions with Lawrence's character. While I would have preferred that the story explored the potential acceptance, healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness process that Lawrence's character may have gone through instead of an imminent disaster bringing about an almost forced reconciliation, I still think the direction the film took worked, even though it felt slightly rushed. I did feel that in the moments when Pratt's character was about to face an almost certain death, that is when Lawrence's character came to the realization that if he DID die, she would then be faced with the same situation that Pratt's character was faced with at the beginning of the film, and that terrified her. Maybe at that moment, she realized how and why he was able to do what he did, as Lawrence's character professes that if he dies, she dies. In the end, Pratt's character, to me, redeemed himself. He found additional capability under a higher security access level of the Auto Doc that would allow someone to be put back to sleep; but since there was only one Auto Doc, only one of them could go back to sleep. The other, as in the beginning of the film, would be forced to live the rest of their life alone on the ship. If he hadn't learned his lesson, he could have hid this from Lawrence's character again, but instead he chooses to share it with her, and offers it to her to allow her the opportunity to live the life she wanted in recompense for waking her to fulfill his needs knowing that he would be alone again with only memories of her. He does a complete 180, and instead of doing the selfish thing, he does the honorable thing; and after this experience, I honestly think that if Lawrence's character did choose to go back to sleep, Pratt's character wouldn't have attempted to wake another passenger again. It is this sequence of events, I think, that allow Lawrence's character to forgive him and choose to spend her life on the ship with him.
All in all, I liked this movie a lot because it did make me ask what I would do in that situation, and really try to contemplate the fragile and emotional perspectives of both characters. What Pratt's character did was wrong, and what Lawrence's character experienced as a result of Pratt's action was wrong, but given the situation, which path would you take?