A basic description of this documentary, directed by Robert Stone, might not sound terribly scintillating. “Starman” is about an hour and a half spent in the fascinating and exhilarating company of one Gentry Lee, an aerospace engineer who, early in the movie, announces that he is one of the “most fortunate people who ever lived.” Some might find that paradoxical, given that he’s never actually set foot in an actual spacecraft, let alone left Earth’s atmosphere in one.
Nevertheless, Lee insists that he has been to outer space, and by the movie’s end, you believe him. In Elton John’s 1972 hit “Rocket Man,” its protagonist complains about “all the science, I don’t understand.” The tune foresees a future in which being an astronaut is just a banal job. But the reality is that practically everyone at NASA is some kind of math whiz, and Lee’s recounting of his early life as a prodigy is poignant and funny. One could say that his job chose him. One of his early colleagues at NASA, and a lifelong friend, was Carl Sagan. Both were part of the team behind the public television series “Cosmos,” hosted by Sagan, which popularized science to the mass audience.
Lee is now 83, but has almost a boyish enthusiasm, and he speaks in the declamatory style of a guy with an idea he’s very eager to sell the rest of the world on. That idea: There could be life on other planets. Or there could have been life on other planets. That we may be the latest in our galaxy’s series of high-functioning civilizations that, for one reason or another, die out. (In our case, the reason, he says, will be humankind’s heedless ruination of the Earth’s environment.
He outlines his theories and propositions with caution and conviction and tells the viewer, “No good scientist or futurist ever makes a categorical statement saying something is impossible.” Lee’s gospel of the possible is ultimately a winning one.
Starman Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.
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