On March 27, the Apple TV+ service finished showing the sci-fi thriller «Constellation», starring popular Swedish actress Noomi Rapace. In the review below, we will tell you what prevented this project from becoming a prominent representative of the declared genre.
Genre science fiction thriller
Directors Michelle McLaren, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Joseph Cedar
Starring Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks, James D’Arcy, Davina Coleman, Rosie Coleman
Premiere Apple TV+
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
An important mission is underway at the International Space Station with research at the Cold Atom Laboratory. As one of the five astronauts on board, Swedish Joanna Eriksson, admits, they are looking for a new state of matter. Suddenly, the station collides with an unknown object, which leads to serious injuries to one of the team members, who later dies, and damage to the ISS itself. To assess the extent of the damage, Joanna goes into outer space, where she discovers the body of a dead woman in a Soviet spacesuit.
Given the circumstances, Jo orders her colleagues to evacuate on the three-seater ship «Soyuz-2», while she stays on the station to fix the malfunctions of «Soyuz-1» and escape on it, before grabbing the capsule with the research results. But during the repair work, the heroine begins to see strange things, not to mention the fact that after returning home, she feels as if everything around her is alien. Including her daughter Alice and her husband Magnus.
«Constellations» — is not the first ambitious sci-fi project from Apple TV+. Unfortunately, from the debut episode, the viewer is greeted by an extremely unpleasant dominance of the Russian trace in the plot, which reminds us of the recent space thriller «I.S.S.», which is not recommended for anyone to watch.
A stern leader from «Roscosmos», a lot of Russian language, and from non-Russian actors, which makes it sound even more disgusting, helicopters with the inscription «VVS Rossii» on the fuselage, the transfer of the action to a Star City located near Moscow (the corresponding title is attached), and so on. All of this strongly encourages me to give up on the show and never return to it in my life.
However, writing a review does not imply conclusions based on just the first two or three episodes, although it is very easy to understand anyone who rightly decides to quit watching before Joe sets foot on the dusty Kazakh plain.
At the initial stages, the authors of «Constellation», primarily known for his work on «Doctor Who» Peter Harness, are trying to cosplay «Gravity» by Alfonso Cuarón.
Noomi Rapace takes the baton from Sandra Bullock with gusto: here you have a desperate heroine in a spacesuit, who alone confronts the indifferent, but no less deadly space; deceptive «glitches», even if not as pleasant as the reassuring smile of George Clooney; and even a trick with a fire extinguisher that helps coordinate the direction of movement in zero gravity.
After the second episode, the narrative descends from the heavens to Earth, again, into a clearly bizarre reality where there are polite luxury people who lend a helping hand to an infinitely tired astronaut. Here, the tense space thriller gives way to a psychological thriller, and even with a conspiracy angle, but the bet is not so much on building up the atmosphere as on the desire to completely mess with the viewer’s head. Some people like this approach, some people don’t, but it’s impossible to distance yourself from the initial unpleasant aftertaste.
In other words, globally, the project offers an interesting concept of a multiverse, though it raises questions about its implementation.
It is very important to pay attention to the small details that the authors generously throw around. Throughout the film, you will notice a lot of mirror reflections on the screen, symbolic bridges that equally divide the frame, or, for example, the reflection of the terrain in the lake. All of these hints and visual techniques suggest the dual, ambivalent nature of things and characters.
This is also the reason why the famous Schrödinger’s cat appears in the plot, when it can be considered both alive and dead at the same time (for the sake of clarity, a real furry animal and its stuffed animal are placed in the frame). However, as opposed to intellectual games with the mind and interesting interpretations of mysterious events, the creators offer such episodes as, for example, the seventh, when the characters wander in vain through the snowy terrain for almost all 50 minutes in search of each other. Such literally standing still does not do any good.
Noomi Rapace, who, after Ridley Scott’s «Prometheus», is not the first to go on a space journey and encounter something incomprehensible, gives a confident performance as a loving wife and mother who finds herself in unusually frightening conditions. Jonathan Banks’s strange storyline seems superfluous, as it raises more questions than it answers. The role of little Alice was played by twins Davina and Rosie Coleman, and both girls did a good job with the difficult roles for a child.
Just a week ago, we wrote about «3 Body problem» — an ambitious project from Netflix that is still fresh in my memory, which also tried to get into intellectual fiction. Not everything was perfect, but against the backdrop of the Netflix show, «Constellation» is clearly losing. And in general, it shoots itself in the foot due to questionable decisions.
