‘My Notes on Mars’ Review: Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend Star in an Imperfect Breakdown of Marriage and Memory

A relationship drama verging on sci-fi, Lili Horvát’s “My Notes On Mars” begins with an intriguing premise that eventually loses steam. It follows the disappearance of an American astrophysicist in the Hungarian mountains who mysteriously returns to her husband on the day of her own memorial. With no memory of who she is or where she’s been, all she’s left with is a single-minded obsession to destroy her research. The film is downright Tarkovskian for its initial hour, unspooling through eerie abstractions that heighten its lingering domestic turmoil. However, its growing mysteries nudge it, paradoxically, toward the literal, leaving it with few places to go.

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The opening images find Margot Fogle (Mackenzie Davis) floating in the outdoor pool of her new, rural homestead just outside Budapest. The sound drowns out as the water covers her ears; as she shuts her eyes, we’re transported — perhaps through her imagination — further and further away from her life on Earth, all the way to Mars’ surface, right down to a microscopic level where strange shapes emerge. This kaleidoscopic introduction recalls the work of Percival Lowell, a 19^th-century astronomer name-dropped in passing, who claimed to have discovered advanced irrigation on the red planet by way of telescopic observation. Sadly, this turned out to be a reflection of the blood vessels in his retina.

So too does “My Notes On Mars” gaze at the sky in order to look inward, amidst frequent talk of humanity escaping its earthbound confines to colonize the heavens. Margot has left her field, and has moved to Hungary with her equestrian husband Sam (Rupert Friend), an uprooting that manifests as quiet disconnects between them. She just can’t seem to make the commitments demanded of her (usually, Sam’s robust social gatherings) and she becomes further distracted when inspiration strikes, taking copious mathematical notes on her hand. She discovered something vital about Mars’ terrain, but Sam is fed up with the growing chasm between them. Margot’s sudden academic spark leads to sleepless nights, and thus, exhaustion on the mountainous hike she reluctantly agrees to, if only to satiate Sam’s frustrations. This is the last he sees of her — that is, until her unexplained homecoming two months later.  

There’s something alluringly alien-esque about Davis’ body language here, an intentional stiltedness and curiosity as Margot takes in the world anew, though not before Sam passes out at the sight of her. What follows is, at first, a deft examination of relationships under quiet stress, where the barely hidden metaphor coheres through a tale of a husband who no longer knows his wife, a wife who no longer knows herself and a society looking to escape its own mundane confines. The only things Margot knows for sure is that she needs to burn her notebook, lest the secrets of Mars be uncovered. That and the fact that she’s attracted to a young employee at a Hungarian observatory, the enthusiastic Alex (Atanáz Babinchak), whom she met just once, as they discussed their common interest in the stars.

Horvát and cinematographer Róbert Maly wrap the story’s gradual unveiling in a curious haze — an intimate glow complemented by Gábor Keresztes’s shimmering score, which resembles the quieter moments of “Interstellar.” However, there’s only so long the film can sustain its inviting double meanings before it finds the need to wheel-spin. Davis is tremendous in the role, especially when saddled with primal urges connected to sound and smell, forcing the question of just who (or what) she has become. However, her performance soon takes on a more grounded, childlike cadence, which roots the supposedly amnesiac Margot a little too firmly within the literal, especially for a tale whose poetry lies in its uncanniness. Similarly, Sam’s frustrations — which Friend embodies through suppressed agitation — seldom evolve as the situation is prolonged, and new information about the disappearance changes little about the plot.

Granted, the central symbolism is as much about grieving a relationship as it is about the denial of that grief. Its repetition is, therefore, not without its reasons, but it yields emotional plateaus, and a destination too emotionally vague to elicit a response. Once you’ve picked up on what the story is about, there’s no meaningful metamorphosis to keep you hooked. Despite some dazzling aesthetic confidence, “My Notes On Mars” plays the same dramatic beats ad nauseam until things begins to stagnate. At the very least, that’s a fitting outcome for a film about a marriage running its course.