“Our entire life is a punishment.”
In the past, I’ve found myself referencing Paul Auster occasionally. The quintessential New York writer, and godfather of the postmodern detective novel, Auster was one of the most prolific authors of his generation whose most notable work, The New York Trilogy, remains an early exercise in meta storytelling. “City of Glass” is the first story in The New York Trilogy and is about a depressed private eye who is hired to track down a man only to briefly encounter another man who looks just like him. Narratively, the story is as far removed from Mickey 17 as can be. However, the idea of a man unexpectedly running into his true self is proudly on display here with Mickey 17.
In a dystopian future, a space employee named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) holds down a job as an expendable, an employee whose mere function is to go out and investigate the frozen planet his superiors are trying to colonize at deadly risk to his own life. Fortunately, Mickey has allowed himself to be copied/cloned and sent back onto the planet over and over again all in the name of research. However, when the 17th version of Mickey accidentally survives, it causes him to come face to face with Mickey 18, setting into motion events that will threaten everything.
Bong Joon Ho’s adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel is definitely not going to be for everybody with its complex plot and high-concept ideas. Even describing the film in logline form to someone takes some serious creativity. Mickey 17 makes some big swings but thankfully has very few misses. For a film that offers space creatures, various forms of death, some gross-out moments, and a tongue-in-cheek nature throughout, that’s saying a lot. Its view of a dystopian future is eerie enough to instill dread, especially when it comes to the heavy political plot points that are an inevitable presence in a movie like this. Admittedly, some of these elements are rather heavy-handed, but then again so are the real-life inspirations they derive from. Thank goodness this is a funny movie that’s chock full of dark humor, particularly in the way everyone treats Mickey’s station in life as the most normal thing in the world. With an architecture that’s almost impossible to predict and a director unafraid of blending genres, Mickey 17 is endlessly fascinating and never boring.
Going back to the Auster mention before, it’s clear that the author’s landmark work influenced Mickey 17, even if indirectly. A lot is going on both under and above the surface in Mickey 17, but the ideas of isolationism and the individual are deceptively at the forefront when it comes to Mickey himself, who more or less exists as a ghost, a non-entity within his own life story. Mickey is such a sad character, but one who finds purpose the only way he can allow himself to until he finds himself bolstered by what happens when he finally ceases to die. The film does a good job of distinguishing the two Mickeys we see and presenting them as the dual sides that live within all of us. This comes through most when Mickey 17 first encounters Mickey 18, his other, who inspires him to finally be an active participant in his own life. This allows Ho to play with, and genuinely explore, the concept of self and society against a sci-fi backdrop, the likes of which the screen has rarely seen before.
Mickey 17 also gives audiences the chance to see yet another side of Pattinson as he continues his journey as an actor not afraid to tackle roles that are both challenging and unconventional. The way he plays the Mickey we see in the beginning as someone who never caught a break, and the later Mickey as a fearless renegade, shows Pattinson as an actor with countless abilities. Naomi Nackle is an invaluable presence as Nasha, the only woman Mickey could ever connect with, while Steven Yeun is great as Timo, Mickey’s supposed friend, whose alliances are always changing.
Mark Ruffalo is on hand for villain duties as Kenneth Marshall, the leader of the spaceship. To say the actor is doing a full-on Donald Trump impression would be too easy. Yet there’s no getting around what his performance seems inspired by. Finally, complete with tiny whispers in her husband’s ear, Toni Collette as Kenneth’s wife Ylfa, seems to be having a ball doing a version of Nancy Reagan, albeit one with far more flair and maniacal qualities than the former First Lady ever had.
If it feels like the moviegoing public has been hearing about Mickey 17 for what seems like ages now, it’s because they have. The movie has seen more release delays than any movie with a cast/crew pedigree like this one should have to see. Numerous reasons were cited for the delays, but it’s hard to see the principal one being anything more than uncertainly about the movie’s commercial prospects. This is a valid concern since the film deals with unpleasant (somewhat political) topics and asks a socially-exhausted audience to laugh at them. I, for one, can’t imagine mainstream audiences willingly taking on such an ask, but I also can’t imagine how anyone who sits down to watch Mickey 17 not embracing the ride.
