195 words about Netflix's Stowaway

You are being cautioned not to sleep on this movie. Also not to sneak onto a spaceship

Stowaway’s story is a classic moral quandary that unfolds steadily before unraveling into something else. The setup relies on some contrivance: how someone accidentally stows away on a space mission, how there are not more safety measures in place, etc. The film offers explanations, one being that the operation behind this venture is an Elon Musk-inspired company that likes to cut corners. At a certain point I stopped caring about how believable the film’s particulars were or weren’t. Because Stowaway’s vibes are exactly what they need to be for a space movie -- quiet, still, but with a tension from beginning to end. Because the film’s scenarios are delicately hung upon almost nothing other than four great performances and a cramped, life-giving interior vs. an infinite, deadly exterior. Because of how Stowaway paints pragmatism bleeding into idealism, how precisely it imagines a transition of operating on what makes the most sense to operating on hope, because hope has become the most necessary motivator… a truth for our planet’s dusk. The final line of the film is recontextualized dialogue: life’s meaning through achievement vs. meaning through what that life is willing to give. It leveled me.