How Ridley Scott and Matt Damon Channel Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart _ on Mars

Rating: 8/10 (5 October 2015)

Some years ago, I accompanied the great director Frank Capra, whose works included life-affirming pictures like "It's a Wonderful Life' and "Meet John Doe," on a nostalgic return to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he had graduated some years before with a degree in chemical engineering.
While there, Capra met with a group of students who had formed an informal film club, for which they shot clever home movies basically for their own pleasure.
Capra patiently waded through the eight-millimeter silent films, which were actually pretty good, and offered some sage advice that applied not only to these little snippets but to movies in general.
First, he said, movies have to have a beginning, a middle and an end, not just be a blurb of cinematic virtuosity that goes nowhere for no particular reason, and second, the characters in the film have to be someone the audience in some way cares about. (He would note during a later meeting I had with him that the reason "E.T." was so successful was that it was, in his words, "a love story between the boy and the alien.")
I mention all of this because a portion of "The Martian," director Ridley Scott's new science fiction movie starring Matt Damon, takes place at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech for NASA.
It's impossible to watch this film and not be reminded of Capra's words. The bright faces and eager minds on the screen helping us wend our way through the story are not unlike those of the young film students I encountered with Capra at Caltech those many years ago.
Interestingly, Damon has been called the new Jimmy Stewart, whose career was cemented by his association with Capra in films like "It's a Wonderful Life," "You Can't Take It with You" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Damon, like Stewart, is a terrifically appealing actor who meets the Capra standard of being someone audiences really care about.
Even more intriguingly, it's not a stretch to say that Stewart _ a decorated World War II pilot who would go on to achieve the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force, and who himself played the ultimate lone-wolf-in-the-sky, Charles Lindbergh, in the 1957 film "The Spirit of St. Louis," as well as the lead in other flight-oriented pictures like "Strategic Air Command," "No Highway in the Sky" and "Flight of the Phoenix" _ might have been greatly interested in this role.
If indeed Damon is the new Jimmy Stewart, then Ridley Scott, at least with "The Martian," might here be called the new Frank Capra.
Like Capra, Scott in "The Martian" emphasizes what is best about man and the human spirit. And like Stewart in those films about flying, Damon is a man who represents mankind.
This film, based on Andy Weir's 2011 novel "The Martian" with a screenplay by Drew Goddard, stars Damon an astronaut named Mark Watney who is left behind on Mars after he is caught in an otherworldly dust storm and presumed dead.
Mission commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) reluctantly decides to leave the planet with her crew.
Watney, although badly injured, is very much alive, and our story begins.
As luck would have it, he is a botanist and there is enough equipment left on the planet from that and past missions so that he can attempt to survive.
During his efforts, Watney records a video diary in case he doesn't make it, wry and humorous descriptions and asides that are almost a movie within a movie (and it's tempting not to think of how Jimmy Stewart might have handled the scenes as well, in his patented offhanded natural way).
A fascinating parallel story has NASA officials reacting back on Earth, both in all their glory as technological whizzes and pioneers, and at their nadir as techno-politicians reaching for ways to spin the possible impending tragedy of losing an astronaut to their own advantage.
The film has a solid cast, and along with Damon and Chastain in the leads, features in supporting roles Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
If I have a problem with the film, it might be that the dialogue is a little too heavy in technological jargon (that may or may not be accurate), and that some of the plot devices seem a bit contrived.
But then I think about those great Capra-Stewart films, which critics also complained were too contrived, to the point that they derisively labeled them "Capra-corn."
If this is corn, I'll take it any time. It's a luscious, beautiful film, made for all the right reasons. Mainly, it's just plain fun to watch.