Spaceman left things in a mysterious memory, and the director of the Netflix sci-fi movie has since tried to clear things up for a confused viewer.
The psychological space drama follows Adam Sandler’s astronaut Jakub on an eight-month mission to collect a sample from the mysterious Chopra Cloud. Six months into his solo journey, Jakub is joined by an alien arachnid – named Hanuš – who helps him come to terms with his traumatic past, which has prevented him from having a relationship with his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan).
In the final act of the film, Jakub and Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) arrive in the Chopra cloud, where they experience an ethereal vision of time and place. Jakub then seemingly overcomes his past troubles and is rescued by a passing South Korean spaceship, while Hanuš drowns in a cloud.
Spaceman director discusses the ending of the film
Like most of the film, Spaceman the ending is designed to raise questions, and there are many opinions about what the film is really trying to say.
After publication Spaceman At Netflix, director Johan Renck spoke to Inverse about the ending of the film.
He revealed that the Chopra cloud is meant to illustrate that “time doesn’t exist” and that “there’s always a way to start over:”
“It’s almost the idea of string theory that time doesn’t exist. Hanuš says in that cloud that everything is permanent, but nothing ever is, which means that what you’ve done in your life, whatever mistakes you’ve made, whatever wrong steps you’ve taken, is taken away from this experience. instead of thinking about it and not being able to move away from it, you can always start over. There is always a way to start over.”
This experience gives Jakub an opportunity “understand that the universe is as it should be” before Renck effectively summed up the film’s theme as follows: “deal with it and move on”:
“It’s a very kind of esoteric way of saying, deal with it and move on. Because that’s all we can do in life. Whatever tragedy, whatever beauty, whatever happens in life, we have to deal with it and we have to move on. We have to move on our journey as humans without being trapped by ideas. Jakub understands that the universe is as it should be. Everything is impermanent until you decide it’s not impermanent anymore and you can change it and make it something new.”
The director added many aspects in an interview with Radio Times Spaceman endings, such as whether Hanuš is real, are “in the eye of the beholder”i.e. for the viewer:
“Everything is in the eye of the beholder. I have shown this film to my friends. Some people think that Hanuš is real. Some people think that Hanuš is a product of Jakub’s imagination and his inner monologue, so to speak. My production designer, with whom I have worked for 20 years, does not believe that anything happened . She believes that Jakub is sitting at home in his apartment in Prague depressed after his wife left him and all this is going through his mind.”
“It’s like whatever floats your boat. There’s no truth to these things. It’s like reading a Book or listening to a song or reading a poem. Your own experiences drive how you take the film, basically.”
(Spaceman Plot Explained: The True Meaning of the Movie)
What happens after Spaceman ends?
As you can expect from such a movie Spacemanwhich is tonally closer to philosophical sci-fi films such as Solaris or interstellar, many plot details are designed to be open ended. This is true until the very last frame of the film.
Meanwhile Spaceman successfully completes Jakub’s character arc, allowing him to deal with his past and find his true purpose – to be with his wife – the film does not confirm whether their relationship will work.
Spaceman ends with a phone call between the couple, with Jakub on the South Korean spaceship finally apologizing for leaving. In the last shot, Lenka smiles into the phone while looking at the stars.
It is unclear whether Jakub will ever make it back to Earth to be with his wife or if she will take him back, and it is unlikely that the audience will ever know the answer to these questions. There is no post-credit order and with Spaceman covers the entire plot of the novel on which it is based (Spaceman in Bohemia Jaroslav Kalfař), it makes further possibilities very unlikely.
Therefore, as in a large part of the film, the outcome of Lenka and Jakub’s relationship after the credits is up to the viewer to decide.
Spaceman now streaming on Netflix.