Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Joe Penna
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, Daniel Dae Kim, Shamier
Anderson
On the evening of November 22nd, 1968, American TV viewers were treated
to a taboo-breaking moment in TV history – a kiss between a White actor
and a Black actress, as
Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura locked lips. In the universe of
Star Trek it was no big deal. Gene Roddenberry's show took
place in a distant future where race was no longer an issue and Kirk was
regularly seen snogging women of every skin colour imaginable. Back in
20th century Earth it was a different story.
The out of touch liberals that run Hollywood like to think we're
already living in Roddenberry's post-racial world. In recent years
colourblind casting has started to become the norm. In general that's a
positive – actors shouldn't be ghettoised into playing parts that draw
specifically on their ethnicity – but when applied without consideration
it can lead to tone deafness.
Take Stowaway. With its multi-racial cast it appears outwardly progressive, and the
filmmakers will no doubt claim they simply cast the best actors for the
roles. What they don’t seem to realise is how politically loaded the
film has unintentionally become thanks to their casting choices.
Stowaway is a movie in which two White women and an Asian
man decide the fate of a Black man, yet the film refuses to examine or
even acknowledge this dynamic, and it becomes one of the most egregious
examples of the White saviour trope imaginable.
Stowaway is set in the future, but not that far in the
future that we can say that in space nobody can see colour. It concerns
a mission to Mars, and only a couple of days before its release on
Netflix, NASA flew a helicopter on the Red Planet, so it's not that far
off.
The mission is headed by Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), and she's accompanied by medical researcher Zoe Levenson (Anna Kendrick) and biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim). Mere hours after
take-off, but long enough that they can't turn back and return to Earth,
they discover they're accompanied by an accidental stowaway. Launch Plan
Engineer Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson) was knocked unconscious
while prepping the shuttle and has only just now been discovered.
Initially, Adams is accepted into the group and pulls his weight by
performing menial tasks. Arrangements have been made for his younger
sister to be taken care of for the two year duration of the mission.
Adams is heartbroken at first, but then he realises that he's
accidentally living his dream of becoming an astronaut.
Trouble is, when Adams got stuck onboard he damaged the ship's oxygen
generator, leaving only enough oxygen for three people to ultimately
survive. Desperate for a solution, Barnett contacts ground control, who
tell her in no uncertain terms that one person must sacrifice themselves
for the others to live. Deciding that Adams is the most expendable,
Barnett agrees to hold on for 10 days while they try to figure out a way
to save him, and keep their dilemma a secret from the man they may have
to sacrifice.
As if it wasn't unpalatable enough that the fate of a Black man is left
in the hands of two White women and an Asian man, Barnett and Levenson
are portrayed as compassionate, desperate to find a way to solve the
problem, while Kim is so cold and logical he might as well be sporting
pointy Spock ears. How nobody involved stopped to think about how this
might come across is astonishing. The fact that Barnett, Levenson and
Kim keep it a secret from Adams rather than asking a highly qualified
engineer if he might have something to contribute himself just
makes it all the worse, and at one point Levenson is charged with
performing a dangerous task that seems ideally suited to someone with
Adams' qualifications.
If this were an intentional study of how Whites and Asians consider
Blacks incapable of looking after themselves (worth less, if not
worthless), it might be applaudable for daring to confront such a truth.
But no, this is all purely an accident of tone deaf, colourblind
casting. Never once is the racial dynamic addressed. We're never treated
to the awkward conversations that would ensue between Barnett and her
superiors regarding how people on Earth might react to a Black man being
sacrificed to save two White women and an Asian man. How this is being
dealt with on Earth is left ambiguous, but you can imagine it would be a
major news story, likely leading to protests in the streets.
If, like apparently the filmmakers, you "don't see colour," then I envy
you. But I doubt it would make Stowaway much more
engaging. Regardless of the racial issues, it never really grapples with
its central theme of how human lives are valued by education level and
skills. After all its tortured moodiness, it ultimately comes down to
another protracted scene in which someone has to venture outside the
shuttle and take a dangerous space walk to repair a doohickey.
Director Joe Penna does a decent job of creating a sense of
scale while keeping the camera for the most part inside the shuttle, and
there's one lovely piece of economical visual storytelling in which a
key revelation is made simply by a prop being moved out of the way.
After his Mads Mikkelsen vehicle
Arctic, Penna has demonstrated that he knows how to craft a survival
thriller, but in his casting here he's raised issues he seems completely
unprepared to address (and I didn't even mention the scene in which an
Asian man explains Jazz to a Black man).
