Gentry Lee, a NASA engineer and sci-fi author, leads a documentary of the history of the search for alien life and the love of space through the lens of his life in director Robert Stone’s fascinating documentary Starman.
Earth is tiny. A little blue needle in a vast, never-ending haystack of the rest of the universe. Space is huge, unknowable, and utterly mind-blowing in the expanse. Countless documentaries have explored every aspect, including Starman writer-director Robert Stone (Academy Award-nominated for the non-space Radio Bikini) in the Emmy-nominated six-hour miniseries Chasing the Moon. Now, Stone turns his lens towards man’s search for other life in the cosmos with Starman. This search itself is a wide topic, and to truly grasp it, we need a guide.
Gentry Lee, the titular Starman (sorry, fans of the underappreciated John Carpenter film of the same name, there is no relation), is that guide. Lee is a fascinating individual with such a history. He burst into life with an eager mind, ready and willing to learn; reading at a college level at a young age and retreating into the books to fill the wanderlust. As the documentary will tell you, so I need not get into his history deeply, he was involved with NASA and its various projects over his career, notably the Mars-based Viking missions in the 1970s and the Galileo project. He was a writer for the original Carl Sagan Cosmos and co-wrote the later Rama books with Arthur C. Clarke (a favorite series of mine; check them out). Lee is a renaissance man of science, interwoven in both science fact and fiction in the modern era.
At 82, Lee continues to have an infectious exuberance. Lee is the only talking head in the documentary, but he’s the only one needed. Filled with vigor and life, he loves what he’s talking about, and it shows. He’s fascinating to listen to as he recounts the trials and travails of the space program, its implications, and the wider view of what it’s looking for and what might be out there looking for us. He’s the only interview subject, kudos to Stone for the focus point to orbit around, but not the only voice. Stone cuts Lee’s recounting with clips of history and culture; most fascinatingly of peering into NASA’s labs and watching the engineers hem, haw, argue, and debate. Watching them work is a joy. It’s fun to watch Lee’s style (especially is hair) alter and change over time. An interesting man, while young, is still interesting as an octogenarian.
Despite the name, Starman isn’t just about Lee. He serves as a gateway to exploring man’s obsession with finding alien life. Fitting for his career, in both fact and fiction, but based on what scientists and explorers of the night sky find, which authors use to create their stories. The culture of alien life, in space or possibly visiting the planet, has fueled written fiction and possible encounters, from Betty and Barney Hill to the modern age. Starman delves into human history and culture, melding with the science of the hows and whys.
As a writer himself, Lee, with Stone as documentary writer, can convey mind-bending concepts easily and straightforwardly. Fermi’s Paradox, the formula of how there has to be intelligent life, but why we have not and cannot find it, has never been simpler. It’s all heady, but accessible, balancing a variety of topics and approaches as the two ends meld and inform one another. With all the topics, a viewer may wish that certain areas of interest would be explored more deeply before Starman moves on. As essentially a primer, it’s understandable to move quickly, and I hope anything that strikes a viewer will lead to a personal search for more knowledge.
Stone creates an impressive tableau in his documentary style around Lee and what he provides. There’s a meditative peacefulness in the presentation of the beauty of space on its own or the awesome expanse of the Earth’s night sky. It’s all utterly gorgeous, presented with awe-inspiring largess, helped with Lee’s wonderful manner of speaking. He’s loud and blunt, yet enthralling; as I said, he’s exuberant. The expression of energy and the otherworlds combine to a strange beauty.
Stone never fails to impress with how Starman is stitched together from Lee, fun uses of stock footage, the history of this corner of science tableau, and the majesty of the universe. Starman is a documentary filled with the wonder of outer space, meditative and mind-blowing, all led by a fascinating subject in Gentry Lee.
PS – The David Bowie song plays over the end credits to help kill that earworm playing in your mind during the runtime of the documentary.
Starman is presented through the Seattle International Film Festival, running in-person screenings May 15th – 25th and selected online screenings March 26th – June 1st. See Siff.net/festival for more.