Netflix has just presented its new film with Adam Sandler: do Jakub and Lenka end up together in the end? Who is Hanuš really? What is the Chopra Cloud? We explain the feature film to you.
An astronaut’s mission is to collect samples of a strange space phenomenon near Jupiter. But the isolation weighs on him, and he fears that his wife will not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. While he is depressed, this spaceman meets a creature capable of communicating with him.
It was Johan Renck, director of episodes of the series Chernobyl and better known for his clips created for big names in music (David Bowie, Madonna, Beyoncé), who directed Spaceman. To play the characters, he can rely on a three-star cast: Adam Sandler steps out of his usual comic roles to deliver a melancholy performance, opposite Carey Mulligan in the skin of Lenka, Jakub’s wife.
Without forgetting, obviously, the strange Hanuš (we hear you snickering, but it’s pronounced ha-NOOSH), for whom Paul Dano gave voice. The film adapts the novel An Astronaut in Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar, and presents a simple, but effective story.
However, some details might seem a little obscure, and questions are left unanswered. Who is Hanuš really? What is the Chopra Cloud? Are Lenka and Jakub still a couple at the end? We explain the Spaceman film to you on Netflix.
Warning: spider images and Spaceman spoilers ahead!
Summary
- What is the Chopra cloud in Spaceman?
- Spaceman is not a science fiction film, but a love story
- Do Jakub and Lenka remain a couple at the end of Spaceman?
- Who is Hanuš really, and what is his real role in Spaceman?
- Why is Hanuš shaped like a spider?
What is the Chopra cloud in Spaceman?
The Chopra Cloud represents the heart of Jakub’s mission in Spaceman. The astronaut’s objective is to reach this mysterious space phenomenon to recover particles, which will then be analyzed on Earth.
The cloud lives up to its name: it is a pink mass of stardust – or glitter according to Lenka. Appearing four years before the start of the plot, no one knows his origins or the reasons for his arrival in the sky. If Hanuš presents it as the Beginning of times and their end, Jakub’s final foray inside only confirms all the visions he had experienced up until then in his vessel.
One thing is certain: if the cloud is the trigger for the mission, it nonetheless remains a pretext for the story. Its particles cannot be caught, passing through matter and time, according to Hanuš. The ship did not resist his contact, and Jakub was only narrowly saved by the arrival of the South Koreans who were hot on his heels.
According to the director in comments reported by Netflix, Chopra’s cloud is just a pretext. The aim of the film was to show the isolation of the main character, and it was necessary to give him a reason to embark on an expedition far from everything: “We could have made this film in lots of different ways. It could have been a solitary mission to the Chopra cloud, or it could have been a man sailing alone in the Pacific Ocean. The goal is to see how we ourselves sink into distance and solitude, to the point of no longer being able to overcome them.”
Because in reality, Spaceman is not a science fiction film: it’s a love story!
Spaceman is not a science fiction film, but a love story
Chopra’s cloud is only a pretext to show Jakub’s flight from everything, then his isolation. But for Johan Renck, the subject of the film is not space travel: it is the love story between the two lovers.
In any case, this is what the filmmaker states in his explanation of the film for Netflix: “I have never, absolutely never seen this film as science fiction. There are sci-fi elements with the Chopra cloud and some concepts that revolve around it. […] It was above all a love story for me, with the particularity of space travel, which becomes a perfect metaphor.”
Yes, we are in a spaceship, closer to Jupiter than to Earth. But no, that’s not the main subject of the film. Jakub’s mission is not the end, but his means. Indeed, the change of scenery caused by the weightless environment, the coldness found in all the devices and the walls overloaded with pipes and other elements unusual for the public eye, all this only serves to emphasize the solitude of the character, far from home and the woman he fled.
Johan Renck even enjoys reporting the words of Jan Houllevigue, the production designer with whom he has worked for several years, and who sees the film as a simple story of rupture: “There is no space, there is no There’s no Chopra. He’s clearly a man who got dumped and is sitting in his crappy apartment trying to figure out what just happened to him. And everything else is the scenario he imagines to represent what happened to him.”
But if Jakub was dumped and Spaceman is above all a love story, another question arises: are Jakub and Lenka still a couple at the end of the Netflix film?
Do Jakub and Lenka remain a couple at the end of Spaceman?
Yes, Jakub and Lenka are still a couple at the end of Spaceman: this is in everything that is shown using different sequences in the finale.
Spaceman plays between several stories: there is that of the spaceship and the creature that occupies it. There are also the memories that emerge, with the help of Hanuš who seems capable of bringing to the surface the buried memory and the feelings of which the hero is ashamed, such as his guilt towards his father, the need to make up for political events for which he is not responsible, fear of his relationship and having to keep his promises…
And then there is this dream that Jakub has, in which he ventures into the middle of a dense forest. If at the beginning of the film, we can see it as a way of taking refuge in a more “earthly” environment than his ship despite its hostile appearance, we understand at the end that the scene retraces the journey and progress of the hero towards a completely different one. goal: to restart his relationship with Lenka from scratch.
The memories in which we see the two lovebirds disguised at the start of their relationship then echo Jakub’s daydreams. We understand that Lenka’s clothes make her the nymph of the story, who only offers a kiss to those who agree to sacrifice their own life.
Which recalls a remark made by the woman at the start of the film, when she explains that falling in love means agreeing to sacrifice a part of yourself to leave room for the other. At the end of his journey, Jakub finally understands his words. When he asks for a kiss, Lenka disguised as a nymph in the virgin forest tells him that he will die from it: he accepts.
At the very end of the film, a particle from the Chopra Cloud appears on Earth, near Lenka. We know that the phenomenon represents the “Beginning”: we can therefore conclude that yes, Lenka and Jakub stay together at the end of Spaceman. And more precisely: they start from scratch, taking into account what they have both learned.
Who is Hanuš really, and what is his real role in Spaceman?
Hanuš, a sort of enormous spider who infiltrated Jakub’s ship, presents himself as a particularly old and wise alien being, who finds himself alone after fleeing an invasion on his own planet.
But the alien is necessarily more than that. He explains that he learned to speak the same language as Jakub by observing humans, who subjugate him. If its appearance can be frightening at first glance – a thoughtful thought for arachnophobes – it turns out to be harmless. Better: in a purely altruistic approach, he decides to help Jakub face his problems in order to resolve them.
The presence of the creature, however, is not there for science fiction, as the director recalled. In this case, what is Hanuš’s role in Spaceman? The giant spider may actually have several, according to Johan Renck: “It’s a voice of reason. Obviously, you can see Hanuš as a creature from the Beginning, or see him as a hallucination arising from Jakub’s isolation and feverish state to have someone to talk to in the ship.”
But the filmmaker then reminds us that sometimes we have to see things as they are presented. Hanuš is an alien life form, and that’s already a lot: “I don’t want to make him something dull. I want him to be this selfless creature who believes he can help Jakub overcome the trials he faces. I don’t want the film to be about some sort of manifestation of an astronaut’s lonely spirit. That would annoy me a bit, actually. “
Why is Hanuš shaped like a spider?
But if Hanuš is an extraterrestrial creature, his design nevertheless reminds of something very familiar to spectators. Eight legs, many round eyes, huge fangs… the life form clearly has that of a spider.
To find out why the alien has the appearance of a weaver, we must look to the novelist Jaroslav Falfar for the answer. The latter told Netflix that when he was little, he was fascinated by the many spiders present in his grandparents’ house: “I always saw them as observers because they remained completely still for days in their web inside us. looking. When I was a child, I asked myself these questions: Do they wonder what we are doing? Are we playing a kind of opera in their eyes?”
For the author, it was also necessary for the creature to be different from man, to better serve another objective: that of dialogue between two foreign beings. “There was something really beautiful about the idea of having to explain your humanity to a creature that is not human,” he said.
Spaceman has been available on Netflix since March 1, 2024.
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