Movie Review: Aniara

Aniara **** / *****

Directed by: Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja.

Written by: Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja based on the poem by Harry Martinson.

Starring: Emelie Jonsson (Mimaroben), Bianca Cruzeiro (Isagel), Arvin Kananian (Chefone), Anneli Martini (The Astronomer), Jennie Silfverhjelm (Libidel), Emma Broomé (Chebeba), Jamil Drissi (The Intendent), Leon Jiber (Daisi Doody), Peter Carlberg (Chief Engineer), Juan Rodríguez (The Man from Gond), David Nzinga (Mima Host), Dakota Trancher Williams (Tivo).

 

It is interesting that the Swedish film Aniara is debuting in the weeks after Claire Denis’ High Life came out in theaters. The two films are very different in many ways, but do have some definite similarities. Denis’ life is about a spaceship with a limited crew – all convicts – who are set adrift in space never to return to earth, ostensibly to have experiments done on them, but that may not really be the case. Aniara is set aboard a large spaceship – the space equivalent to a cruise ship really – who is supposed to be making a three-week journey between Earth (which is dying due to climate change) and the new colony on Mars. But fairly early in their journey, they run into some obstacles, and in order to save the ship, they have to jettison all their fuel. This works – but it basically means the ship is now adrift in space forever. The captain tells people not to worry – they just need to pass by a planet to get them back on track – two to three years at most, they say. Until then, the ship has enough life sustaining systems in place that they can survive. The gourmet meals will stop eventually – but you’ll be used to eating algae. What only a few of them know is that this is almost definitely a pipe dream – they will likely be drifting in space for the rest of their lives.

 

Based on an epic poem by Nobel Laurete Harry Martinson, Aniara is fascinating film in how it shows the ways this society either breaks down, and the ways in which it doesn’t. It wouldn’t be accurate to call it a Lord of the Flies story, because society doesn’t break down that rapidly. The movie’s main character is known as the Mimaroben (Emelie Jonsson) – so called because she runs the Mima machine – a kind of strange virtual reality room, that can read the users mind, and present them with idyllic images of their time on earth. As the journey takes longer and longer, more and more people start to want to use the Mima machine – so much so that the sentient machine starts to go insane itself – starting to show darker images to the people, and starting to malfunction. It’s the first of several mini-rebellions throughout the film.

 

The years drag on and on and on in Aniara – the film hopes forward, sometimes years at a time, to show how everyone is dealing with things. There is a part about a sex cult that forms – fuck the pain away I guess – and then more with how Emelie tries to build some sort of life in the film itself – a spouse, a child, etc. Homicidal rage is not prevalent – it gets there – but there is much more suicidal despair. How does a society without hope continue to function? There are a few times when hope is there – but it usually falls back into despair.

 

MR then is pretty much the only character in the film that doesn’t lose complete hope – that seems to try and move forward. The captain revels in his power, and will eventually basically see the ship as his own fiefdom. Others are lost in the existential despair of drifting forever without a destination. As we continue to tick forward, things in the ship become slightly more rundown – but you can still survive. But when you’re drifting with no destination, what is the point. MR tries to hold onto to something – when everyone else seems to be lost. Aniara is, of course, a microcosm of our own planet – our own existence. It’s just a smaller planet, hurtling through space, on a journey without end. Are our lives any different than those on Aniara? Is this the way humanity will come to an end?

 

Directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja do a good job, on a limited budget, creating the world of Aniara in terms of art direction and design. They also, smartly, don’t really attempt to answer any of the larger questions facing everyone on board the ship – they simply present them, and let you decide. And they take it all the way to the logical, despairing, conclusion without trying to put any sort of false hope or happy ending to it. By its design, because it is literally showing years and years and years in only 105 minutes, the film does jump around a little bit, from one subplot to another – ones that are often abandoned in those jumps, as people have moved on in the interim. A tighter focus may have provided more details – but you would have missed the larger picture. It’s a tradeoff you have to be willing to accept – and if you do, you will be rewarded by Aniara – which like High Life is a sci-fi film of ideas, not special effects, and shows just what the genre can attain when it doesn’t reign in its ambitions.