A film review: Aniara (2018)
Aniara, based on the 1956 epic poem by Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson, is a thought provoking, clever and well produced Swedish science fiction film and winner of numerous independent film awards. And unique. According to Cinema Paradiso, who stock over 80,000 films, there are no other Swedish science fiction films.
Set, I believe, in the not too distant future, the Earth is a ruin; ravaged by natural disasters and largely uninhabitable. So, the human race is migrating to Mars in enormous liners, dozens and dozens of stories high; flying hotels and shopping centres, everything the 21st century consumer would need for the three week journey. Included in this total escapism experience is MIMA, a device that reads your mind’s most lucid dreams and desires and through complex virtual reality takes you right there.
However, a little way into their journey the craft is struck by a small piece of space debris which pierces the engine, causing catastrophic failure and ejection, and knocking the ship off course and into deep space.
The crew and passengers are told that their course will be corrected by using the next celestial object to catapult them back towards Mars. However, Emelie, a member of the crew and the Mimaroben, the engineer in charge of MIMA, shares a cabin with the ship’s astronomer. The celestial body story is science fiction. There’s no going back.
This intriguing film now becomes a study of gradual and irreversible lost hope, and a descent from order to chaos to doom. Each stage is plotted as a separate chapter of the film, which starts with a timestamp of how long since the ship left Earth. It sounds bleak — it is bleak — but also a moving tale of everyday people trying to find love and companionship, and a connection to anything that makes sense to them; art, nature, religion. It does make me wonder what mine would be, faced with the same inevitability. As grim as it sounds the story is told as a sensitive glimpse into the human ability to handle crisis. Or perhaps, as a glimpse into society versus an individual’s ability to handle crisis.
The cast is good and there are no weak links. The captain, Chefone, who struggles to hold himself together, let alone his passengers and crew is played well by Arvin Kananian. The cold and distant pilot, Isagel, played by Bianca Cruzeiro, who rides a tragic rollercoaster throughout the story. And of course Emelie Garbers, the Mimaroben, as mentioned above, who is excellent as the tragic and brittle heroine.
The denouement, the last ‘chapter’, together with it’s time stamp, is the scene that I could not get out of my head for some time. The whole film is great, but is almost worth watching just for this finale.
The budget is low for a science fiction film, the whole thing being filmed in what looks like a suburban shopping centre and a cruise ship, but that takes nothing away from it at all. This is Swedish, not Hollywood.
One thing I love about films, and writing reviews of them, is finding gems that are hidden behind the so-called blockbusters. Midsommer (2019) and Scarborough (2018) are good examples. And, for me, this is another such gem.
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