A mid-week trip to Busselton allowed us to leave the mini-humans with the ancient ones and take in Passengers at the Orana Cinema. And a few days later, I'm still not sure what I thought of this film. It's cheesy, certainly. It's also sweet. It's minimalist and also fairly bloody grandiose. It poses a couple of existential questions and also has a great big misogynistic hurdle to jump. I usually wince when I hear "You'll either love it or hate it", but I reckon I like and dislike Passengers in equal measure. It's kind of a Jekyll and Hyde film, actually, in that I enjoyed it while watching but then it's hideous alter ego crept up and dribbled hot spit down my back.
The sets up a pretty sweet poser - "Would you choose to 'wake' another human to share your isolation, even if you knew it would be condemning them to death?" I'm guessing most people would say they wouldn't......until they actually experience the situation. The film explores Pratt's dilemma reasonably well but I can't help thinking how it might have played out had Lawrence woken up first. Would she have made the same selfish decision? And would Pratt have handled the situation in the same manner? If any film is begging for a gender role swap, this is it.
There are many things to enjoy aside from the morals, though. The set design is great, the spaceship (left) looks phallic-ly magnificent (it's even used in the old fashioned coital 'train entering a tunnel' style) and the added tension of the ship breaking down is well-handled. There's also a great sequence where the gravity fails as Lawrence is swimming in a pool (below). That was pretty mint. But it's fair to say the film would have suffered if the 'passengers' weren't as shiny as Lawrence and Pratt. They almost make the central conceit work. Almost.
Apart from finding it hard to square Lawrence's ultimate decision, I was also a tad confused as to why Michael Sheen's android would spill the beans as he did, when he did. Another reason why I can't seem to decide whether Passengers is a flawed success or a successful flaw. I'd like to hear other folk's opinions. Cheers.
