SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
I have always tried to avoid giving away plot points when summarising my reactions to a film, but on this occasion I shall do so to ensure my feelings about 'Passengers' are clear.
I cannot recall a film that has annoyed me so during the days after viewing it.
I went to see this Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt movie with high expectations. If you have read my other thoughts about Jennifer Lawrence films, you will know I am a huge fan. For me, I cannot envisage anyone else as Katniss Everdeen. And she is again very good in this story.
The problem is the plot. I assume this is supposed to be an interstellar love story. Yet, this is the central problem. Having been unexpectedly woken from hyper-sleep space travel 90 years early, Chris Pratt's Jim Preston lives for over a year on his own surrounded by sleeping travellers. Starved of company, insane almost, he falls in love with one of his co-passengers Aurora Lane and decides, after initial resistance to his urges, to artificially halt her slumber and thereby condemn her to joining him in never reaching their planet destination.
There are several occasions on which we are invited to enjoy the physical beauty of the leads, and as Lane reciprocates Preston's feelings of love, we are presented with quite intimate scenes for a 12 (I was especially sensitive to this with a small lad sitting in the row behind with his father).
But I could never forget the set up: as Aurora herself later says after inevitably discovering Jim's secret, what he has done is tantamount to murder. And, to my mind, in not knowing the truth of the situation, I felt that their sexual relations were more like repeated rape.
So with this creepy scenario and the overwhelming awareness of his deceit, I watched with a sense of being a spectator of something grubby and tainted. The camera therefore seemed to linger voyeuristically, almost leering at the flesh on show. I never felt comfortable sharing their journey as a result. It always came back to how their relationship started: But he...!
After the truth is told and she breaks off from him, dramatic circumstances eventually bring reconciliation and renewed love. Ultimately, he stumbles upon the chance to return her to hyper sleep, making an offer that would mean life for her on a new planet home and fulfilment of all her dreams and aspirations, but lonely isolation for him until his death. However, coming as it does at the climax of the film, the fleeting moments of redemption are insufficient to offset the lengthy proportion of the film during which he acted duplicitously.
Now... does this say more about me than the film? Am I too quick to not offer forgiveness? Am I subconsciously prejudiced towards a character acting dishonourably towards one of my all-time favourite actresses? How big does a lie or lack of transparency to one's partner have to be before we should consider any sexual advances to the target of one's 'deceit' to be forced upon them? Is it REALLY that clever a film, deliberately seeking to provoke these reactions?
Or, am I right that the film really just does not work?