There’s an obvious question at the heart of Spaceman, Netflix’s science fiction movie where Adam Sandler’s forlorn astronaut character spends half the story talking to a tennis ball communing with a giant alien spider that he names Hanuš. But even without watching the movie, viewers may wonder: Is Hanuš actually real?
Normally, when a movie revolves around this kind of question, the director and stars hedge when asked for their opinions. For instance, No One Will Save You writer-director Brian Duffield has been clear that he wants viewers to interpret that film’s startling ending in whatever way they think fits best, without his input. Andrew Haigh has been careful about weighing in on the controversial ending of All of Us Strangers. And that’s entirely reasonable — often filmmakers want to keep viewers guessing, thinking, debating, and interpreting.
But not always. Polygon couldn’t resist asking Spaceman director Johan Renck and stars Adam Sandler and Paul Dano what they think about the movie’s central debate point — and we were surprised at how definitive their answers were. We’ll get into the details after a spoiler break.
[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for Spaceman.]
Image: Netflix
In the movie, adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, Sandler plays Jakub, a Czech astronaut suffering from extreme depression and anxiety eight months into a solo journey to investigate a mysterious outer-space phenomenon. His isolation is relieved when a giant space spider he eventually dubs Hanuš (an all-CG character voiced by Paul Dano) infiltrates his spacecraft and starts chatting, drawn by Jakub’s loneliness. Hanuš says he, too, is a lonely traveler on his way to visit the same glowing space cloud for his own reasons.
Hanuš can read Jakub’s mind and see into his past. He uses these abilities to force Jakub to confront his secret guilt and face his shortcomings, particularly in the ways he’s failed to support his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan). Eventually, Hanuš accompanies Jakub out into the space cloud, and the two of them hug it out in a kind of cosmic ballet of interspecies understanding and catharsis.
Is Hanuš real?
But Hanuš’ complete access to Jakub’s subconscious and the way he so perfectly represents Jakub’s anxieties does make this question pretty glaring. Is Jakub just hallucinating? Is Hanuš a representation of his guilt and loneliness? How much does Hanuš have in common with the similarly confrontational/therapeutic hallucinatory figures in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 movie Solaris, which director Johan Renck says is one of his favorite movies?
Asked his opinion on the matter, Sandler is cut-and-dried about it: “I go real,” he told Polygon in an interview ahead of the movie’s release.
Co-star Paul Dano feels the same way, though he says it may not matter. “I think he’s real,” he says. “I’ve been totally happy for somebody to think he’s not real, though. And I think that is sort of where you meet the movie as an audience member, in terms of how you engage with it emotionally or intellectually. I don’t know that it’s important. I think what is important is Jakub’s experience of coming to terms with himself, and letting go of the past, and letting go of who he maybe thought he was going to be, or who he had to be, to prove something to himself and see what’s really important in his life.”
‘Of course Hanuš is real’
Image: Jon Pack/Netflix
Renck similarly told Polygon that viewers are allowed to interpret it in whatever way they want: “Obviously, all art, music, film, books, whatever is in the eye of the beholder,” he says. “Your own experience is going to guide what you think of a piece of music or film or whatever. I have to make the film so that it makes sense to me, but that doesn’t in any way mean that there’s a right answer. I spoke to somebody who watched his film with his wife. The wife thought Hanuš wasn’t real, and he thought Hanuš was real. And they had an argument about it. I said, ‘You’re both right.’ I mean, what am I gonna say, you know?”
But that said, Renck has a definitive answer for himself, and he says he put specific proof into the movie. “There’s a very powerful moment that is deliberately in the film for my point of view, in which Hanuš sneezes on Jakub’s helmet, and there is mucus there,” he says. “Jakub wipes it away and looks at it, and for the rest of the movie, that mucus, that phlegm, is on his helmet. For me, there’s no question — of course Hanuš is real. Why make a movie if it’s all just a dream? Hanuš is very real. He’s been around for 14 billion years. His whole journey comes to its fruition here, in terms of making Jakub understand how the universe works, and then Hanuš can pass on to the next version of existence. For me, he’s real.”
Spaceman is streaming on Netflix now.