ONE OF YOUR DUTIES as an American is to see every Clint Eastwood film released, regardless of individual failures, hyperbole, plot holes, or any other mitigating factors whatsoever. He alone has earned that right. So you, dear reader, should simply trust us when we say that Space Cowboys is a very good film that you will greatly enjoy, and allow us to examine a few of Eastwood’s more compelling facets in lieu of a review.
CLINT
No star understands the public’s adoration more profoundly. We don’t care how much swagger they offer: Brad Pitt is constantly afraid of being usurped by Tom Cruise, and vice versa. Only Clint knows that the 100th monkey has sung his praises, that he is inviolable. In Space Cowboys he plays off this inevitability with exceptional flair, throwing down the gauntlet of his stardom and then basking in your inability to pick it up.
DEATH
Eastwood is the only American star who has actively engaged his temporal traverse in the public eye to emerge as our village elder. Space Cowboys finds him obsessed with the mechanics of age and the inevitability of death in a meditation as profound as On Golden Pond, minus the cloying sentiment. When he turns his face toward Earth after launching from the shuttle, it is as succinct an evocation of Death as the American cinema has produced in a decade. Plus, he grows sexier with each dewlap: Cary Grant must be turning in his grave to see our greatest curmudgeon still defining a seductive image.
ECONOMY
It’s no surprise that out of the four astronauts portrayed in Space Cowboys–the hero, the lech, the priest, and the quiet technician–Eastwood opts to play the latter. In his entire career this most American of directors has espoused a perfectly Protestant ethos: Do the job, don’t complain or go over budget, get out quickly–in a word, economy. Moreover, Eastwood’s montages have emerged as the most economical in American cinema, as evidenced by the 10-second ease with which he turns Space Cowboys from a ribald comedy to an action-adventure film: He simply clears the slate and launches (literally) into a new genre.
HUBRIS
The most compelling recent development in Eastwood’s filmmaking is his burgeoning ease with the mechanics of hubris. This trend first came clean in the utterly hyperbolic final sequence of The Unforgiven, where two rifle blasts laid out a whole room. In Space Cowboys, Eastwood stages two scenes of such tremendous hubris that we are left weak-kneed. The first is a vomit sequence that effectively describes a new pinnacle for the genre; the other is a revelatory sequence in which the evil Russian space station is revealed in classic Cold War tones, all rust and iron and menacing side lighting. Then there is the ravishing ending, which we won’t spoil for you: Suffice it to say, over-the-top doesn’t begin to describe it!
JAZZ
One key to Clint Eastwood’s greatness as a filmmaker is his love of jazz. Eastwood understands the beauty of jazz, and its “democratic imperative.” Jazz music is made by a group but demands that someone step up and perform a solo: the individual, the loner, the American. And what is Eastwood if not a jazz soloist?
SEX
Clint Eastwood loves sex. But he never uses sex to make a total or end statement about the human condition in the way Stanley Kubrick did with Eyes Wide Shut. (“What do we do now?” asks Cruise. “We fuck,” says Kidman.) For Clint Eastwood, sex is not the point of conclusion, but the point of elaboration. The main characters in Space Cowboy all have different takes on sex: One doesn’t stop thinking about it; one is happily married and committed to his woman; one is keenly sensitive to the sorrow at the center of sex; and one never talks about it or has it, but experiences sex as fantasy in the form of a Hawaiian doll that dances and sways on the cockpit’s panel. Put these four parts together and you have a healthy sense of sex.
SPACE
The America of unending conquest reached its end with the 1969 moon landing of Apollo 11. Eastwood in his movies has tamed the West, formed communities out of disparate fellow travelers, defeated the Nazis, and outsmarted the Russians. Onscreen and off, his career has been defined by overcoming every horizon along his path. It’s only logical that he should set his sights on space and abandon Earth completely.
