Sequelae in a Trenchcoat

I was listening to City Of Stars on repeat and kept thinking about aroace grace. I love grace who is happy without a relationship, who doesn't need any romantic relationship to be fulfilled, but... I also keep thinking about Grace being a hopeless romantic. Grace who keeps hearing about love love love and nothing else, Grace who keeps waiting for that one true love, Grace who was more in love with the idea of romance than his actual girlfriend. Grace who just doesn't understand why it doesn't come naturally to him, why he can't seem to have what everyone else wants, what he keeps dreaming of. Maybe he thought Stratt may be the one for him. Maybe the idea of a big swooping romance with Stratt makes him want to claw his eyes out. Grace doesn't know what he wants.

He wanted to experience romance so bad, to understand what it was like to fall in love, what everyone keeps talking about... and now he never will.

Nope, not yet. First, let's look at Grace's physicality as more and more lenses surround him. I'm personally deeply obsessed with how Grace interacts with Rocky's xenonite barrier.

In their first meeting, Rocky assumes he's dealing with another creature that relies on hearing as primary form of perception. After all, Rocky can hear through to the other side of the Mary with pinpoint accuracy, can even track Grace's status and location on the hull of the ship when falling into high orbit. But this weird alien bypasses each section of the nice big solid acoustically-friendly wall to focus in on the one spot where light shines through.

So the next wall Rocky builds is geometric blocks of glass. Which Grace, without prompt, makes himself comfortable with, finding any and all alcoves and wedging himself in.

Fun fact: It takes less than 30 seconds for Grace to go from "IDK you watching me sleep is weird" before the smash cut to "i have now dragged a cushion, pillow, and my favorite quilt into the glass to sleep here." I counted 26 seconds.

I can't even make that weird by pointing anything out about it. We have already started at Grace making it weird, to my absolute delight.

But even when Rocky decides to move onto the Mary, Grace doesn't seem to mind beyond some token protests on his little vlog. Which is quite remarkable, because wow. Wow. Look at this.

Here is Ryland Grace, under glass.

There is such an secession of space to Rocky. Even if it weren't, these shapes and the way they bend light and cast shadows are the focal point of every scene. Always center of frame, and we always watch how Grace interacts with this, how he bends to duck underneath, how he drags monitors closer for Rocky to see, how he continues to sleep pressed along any sympathetic angle he can find.

Add to that how Grace is framed, as a significant chunk of the film is looking through the glass at Grace, and this begins to invert the core concept of what's occurring here. Who is in an enclosure here, really? Does the glass keep Rocky safe? Yes, but does it also keep Grace safe?

Even after the two have gone their separate ways, Grace doesn't dismantle the enclosures to reclaim the space. Instead, as he contemplates turning back to his almost-certain death to save Rocky and Erid, he lays in the Don't-Go-Crazy room with a foggy memory surrounding him, his body weight against alien glass.

Grace's happy ending was something that I could not even conceive of until the moment it happened. I honestly couldn't imagine the story would let Grace live, let him save Rocky, and then let him be a teacher again.

Erid is a planet without enough light to see, and yet the people there build a ball of glass just for Grace, tailored to his happiness and whim.

That's a whole lotta motif-building. Now is time for the question: what does it mean?

Art is subjective and my answer will differ from yours. Here's what it makes me feel:

Between this post and the previous table-setting post, the thing that I cannot stop fixating on is how this situation should feel versus how much effort the film goes into to avoid that exact emotional beat.

We have a story about a man from earth, sent off into space, expected to live out the remainder of his life on a spaceship. This ship is further encroached on by necessity as the space is sectioned out to create a habitable area for an alien. In the end, this man's reward is a dome built to give him a habitable space on an otherwise inhabitable planet. He'll never see his home planet ever again.

All of the markers are there. This should be a story of claustrophobia and small spaces and feeling trapped with the walls closing in and no way to break through them because death is on the other side, be it the void of space or the hot, ammonia-drenched atmosphere of Erid.

Should be.

But there's the other side of the story. Grace's last memory of Earth is his voice failing mid-sentence as a needle pierces his skin, as one of his only friends and protectors watches him struggle, and overheard there is a rainbow.

Earth wouldn't take no for an answer. He'd never be a teacher again. A barbed wire fence stands before the rainbow.

I know writers who use subtlety and they're all cowards.

Here's what Project Hail Mary is really saying, with all of its rainbows and refractions and a crying man who sleeps against prisms: Ryland Grace was the light the entire time. It's not something he's looking for, it's not the Deep Truth he's seeking. He just needed a way to shine, to remember it was there.

"Oh yeah, uh... I'm Grace," he says, introducing himself as the world blooms with colored light around him.