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Hilary Swank as the Mars astronaut in "Away": Mom has to go to work
Photo:
Diyah Pera / Netflix / Diyah Pera / Netflix
Why are space films so emotionally upsetting?
Why do you cry when Sandra Bullock in "Gravity" finally manages to head for earth in a Chinese capsule?
What if Matthew McConaughey docks the small spaceship in "Interstellar"?
What if Matt Damon finally manages to grow Martian potatoes in "The Martian"?
Because these films put their heroes in the greatest possible and unimaginable extreme situation.
You can't be more lonely, lost, more vulnerable than in the infinite expanse of space, this hostile nothingness.
Can that even be increased?
Obviously, this question bothered the creators of this new Netflix series.
According to "Away" one can say: Alright.
However, the result is not particularly convincing.
More like emotional overkill.
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Mission Mars is a multilateral act in "Away", even a Chinese woman and an Iranian are part of the crew.
Photo:
Diyah Pera / Netflix / Diyah Pera / Netflix
For ten episodes we watch a team of five on their mission.
Led by Emma Green (played stoically by Hilary Swank) the astronauts have to travel to Mars for a year, spend a year there and fly back a year.
However, anyone who expects to get closer to the imponderables of the universe in these ten hours will be disappointed.
Because it's not really about space travel.
It's about lesbian love that shouldn't be.
About father-daughter relationships.
About mother-daughter relationships.
And the question of what it means for a marriage when one partner is gone for three years.
Because "Away" only partly follows the astronauts on board the "Atlas" - the other part of the series takes place with those left behind on earth, mainly with the family of Commander Green.
Your husband suffers a stroke right from the start.
The daughter is a teen and compensates for her mother's absence by racing at breakneck speed over muddy slopes on a motocross motorcycle.
From this contrast - the larger than life Mars mission on the one hand and family challenges on the other - "Away" tries to make emotional capital.
And it works.
A sequence in which the five isolated astronauts barely escape death by suffocation or dying of thirst and the whole world is watching via livestream is moving for a long time.
It becomes more disturbing and moving when the daughter left behind and the husband sitting in the wheelchair hear her mother's last words - which NASA sends as a precaution in case she does not survive.
Only after about halfway through, a strange feeling of oversaturation sets in.
Too much pathos.
Too many last farewells that are not.
Too many Saul-Paul stories.
If death is overcome at least twice in each episode, at some point it will no longer be taken seriously.
Especially when the hopeful and uplifting mood of the series suggests from the start that the worst isn't going to happen here.
And so it happens.
It is paradoxical: precisely because everything is taken so incredibly seriously, the high points of each episode lose tension.
The existential problems degenerate into challenges that have to be mastered.
From the crew on board the spaceship.
Of the husbands, daughters and lovers on earth.
And because the creators cannot decide where exactly the focus should be, far too many characters and fates are brought to the fore - which then have to be provided with woodcut-like background stories.
The journey to Mars, the human longing for a spark of hope that one is not alone in the universe - that alone would be enough emotional fuel for many consequences.
The earthly ballast of "Away" adds nothing essential to this story, it only weighs it down.
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