Marooned (1969)

 

Marooned is a rather excruciatingly slow movie about three astronauts trying to return to Earth after their mission to a space station has been cut short. Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman, and James Franciscus portray the astronauts who are unable to fix a malfunction on the spaceship Ironman One that’s preventing them from reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. Retrofiring or something like that won’t work, so there’s talk almost immediately about how the three are likely to die in space. There are some possibilities to rescue or save them, such as having some experimental craft that’s never been fully tested swing by and pick them up, or maybe the Russians can help them out if they will cooperate with their American rivals for space exploration. Oh, and there’s not enough oxygen for all three of them to make it home anyways, but they try to stay quiet and sleep as much as possible to conserve the oxygen they do have, and watching people sleep does make for such a compelling movie experience, doesn’t it? Gregory Peck plays the NASA leader back on Earth who has to remain stoic as he subtly suggests that one of the men sacrifice himself for the other two. The astronauts’ wives also show up three times during the course of the film, basically to give pep talks to their doomed husbands. Lee Grant plays the wife of Crenna’s Jim Pruett, and she’s the most matter-of-fact and seasoned wife; Grant knew how to make the most of a few moments of screen time. A young Mariette Hartley plays the wife of Hackman’s Buzz Lloyd, and how she manages to deal with his weirdness after a spell of oxygen deprivation is a master class in keeping one’s emotions mostly in check. Nancy Kovack’s Teresa, wife to James Franciscus’ Clayton Stone, gets the least amount of screen time and less of an opportunity to demonstrate much range here. The women aren’t the focus, but it would make for a much more interesting movie if some of the other sequences were shorter and we had a chance to know more of each woman’s backstory. The plot involves a lot of talking, most of it in technical jargon, and the story seems to unfurl almost in real times when it moves its slowest. It’s only about 134 minutes long; it just seems much longer. Marooned was released only four months after the moon landing, and it must have freaked a lot of people out by tapping into both the excitement and fears about space travel. The Oscar-winning special effects are pretty cool, especially the moments when the astronauts are floating around outside of the ship. The cinematography is also nice and clear, and the production design creates a very realistic simulation of both the spaceship and the control center back on Earth. Interestingly, an edited version of the film from 1991, now entitled Space Travelers, was lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the only Academy Award-winning film to achieve such a dubious distinction. What did the MST3K critics most note about the film? Its slow-moving plot…

Oscar Win: Best Special Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Cinematography and Best Sound