Aniara

The name Aniara comes from the ancient Greek for "sad and despairing" and it lives up to the title. I haven't read the poem that it is based on, but it is a really solid sci-fi. The acting is good throughout, and I never felt that I was watching a low budget movie. This is a perfect example of what independent films should be.

I had... great expectations. The poem made a profound impression on me as a young boy when I read it the first time at around 12 or 13 years of age. The vision of the ship with its hapless passengers drifting endlessly across the infinite void, unable to change their ultimate destiny, descending into inevitable darkness struck a chord that still reverberates within me decades later.

Unfortunately the directors lost the ball. Instead of a much anticipated visual retelling of the epic poem we get bad acting and strange decisions on the cutting board. It seems to me the problem with the actors is that they seem to have been recruited more or less directly from the theatre, obviously a forum they are more comfortable with. The dialog is presented in a strange intonation making it stilted and unnatural. It feels false, recited rather than truly experienced. Neither are the characters given much room to become people in the eyes of the audience. Mostly they lack depth and feel more like paper cutouts, hastily put in place and given a token smear of storyline just enough to separate them from the others, rather than as real living people. Transitions between scenes ar... BLAM STOP BLACK SCREEN almost in the middle of a sentence and then a written text proclaiming the next chapter. So strange. So unnatural. So disruptive.

Yes, the movie had a limited budget which explains some of the shortcuts that had to be taken, but... 20 million actually is quite substantial sum as the story doesn't need much in the way of special effects or expensive sets, not really. The focus on the poem is not on the surroundings or the interior of the ship, but on the interactions between the people on board. No, lesbochock nudity and explicit orgies does not cover the vast rifts in the storytelling, though predicibly the attempt was made. The end result isn't bad, not really. It's worse, it's meh. Meh meh meh.

No, I am not a script writer, nor a director, in fact I have no experience with film making but... this could have been done better. So much better. So disappointed.

This is based on a much-loved poem in Swedish written in 1956 (when my school debating club seriously considered "That man will never reach the moon"). Bear that in mind and much makes sense - more sense than the poem ever did to me when I first tried to read it. Much that purports to be science is just poetry. The film-makers have made some attempt to update the plot and the setting, bearing in mind that we have all seen 2001: a Space Odyssey..

The science is still cheesy. The ship has lost all its fuel, but power is uninterrupted and water is abundant (there is not only an extended lesbian shower scene, but a 20m swimming pool!). The architecture of the ship is absurdly angular, but nothing ever springs a leak. The ship's interior has been compared to a shopping mall and a cruise ship, but manufactured goods never show any sign of running out, and the whole thing seems absurdly understaffed.

It's basically an exploration of how an isolated group of people copes when it is cut off from Earth, its memories and hope. The main characters are sufficiently well drawn to explore these themes in, for me, a satisfying way. On those terms, it does well and is worth watching, though you must fill the hints in the chapter headings with your own deductions.

Toward the end of "Aniara" I kept thinking: thank god Bergman never made a science fiction movie. If you think Mother Earth is bleak, wait until you get lost in space, like the characters in "Aniara" do. And you truly do feel as though you're lost with them.

There are few ideas more appalling than drifting inexorably through the infinite blackness of space, not knowing if you're ever going to stop. "Aniara" provides a bleak portrait of people losing their minds as this goes on, resorting to cults, orgies and suicide.

It's a bit like "2001: A Space Odyssey" in reverse. That was about the development of the human species from pre-sapien species to our becoming one with the stars. "Aniara" begins with the stars, rejects oneness, and shows our utter devolution in space.

I say check it out.

This is a type of apocalyptic storytelling that is so beautiful. It doesn't hinge on false futurisms or morality - it is based on the sorrows that define our lives when we lose all hope. A slow burn that is so worth the indulgence.