Aniara : L'Odyssée stellaire

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.

One of those spot films that have an undeservedly low rating. Not just "well, it could have been higher," but precisely "why the hell is it so low?" For 2018, the graphics are probably not the best where it is needed, and the staging of the entire action of the film a little bit falls, but this is not Hollywood either. For Sweden, I think this is a very, very high level of the film. But this is so small thing... in comparison with the most important thing in that film: the story itself. It's great. Saturated with an extremely correct vision of what would happen to people if they were in a similar situation. And the end, although it was expected, but... The last scene was just very dense and strong.

The ideas for a great film are certainly here. A group of people attempting to form a society in a spaceship after they have no hope of making it back to civilization which is set against their deteriorating mental states is definitely an interesting concept. I mainly enjoyed seeing the various ways the passengers coped with this, such as cults or sex orgies popping up, or the Mima being heavily relied on by the passengers as a way to keep calm. I appreciated the undercurrents of escapism in these scenes and I responded the most to them. In that sense, the film is at its best when one views these scenes in a vacuum for their stylistic and sensory merits.

Skimming through some critical reviews, I noticed that a lot of people liked the production design. I enjoyed some elements of it such as the exterior shots of the ship or the framing of the Mima. Overall though, I wasn't a fan of it. While I didn't mind that the interior of the ship didn't look futuristic, I wish that more work would've been put into it as it felt like the film was mostly shot in a shopping center and a hotel. To a degree, this distracted me as I could feel its low budget.

Also, after finishing the film, I couldn't shake the feeling that, in spite of all its craft and ideas, it had ultimately failed to connect with me. For one, I wasn't a big fan of the pacing. The film operated at a high pace, leading to a handful of segments and some various scenes being glossed over, as if the film was always in a hurry to get to the next scene. This style of pacing clashed poorly with how mundane and uneventful life on the ship was, making it hard to get on the character's wavelengths. While I don't think that every film should represent sculpting in time, displaying such felt especially necessary for this film concerning its tone. I also felt like the pacing harmed a few character motivations since there wasn't enough breathing room to flesh the ideas out in them fully, like the Astronomer's or Isagel's final scenes in the film.

Overall, I wasn't too impressed by this film. The groundwork for a great film is certainly here and the film managed to work a couple wonders out of its script, but ultimately, I don't think the film delivered on its promising setup and it ultimately left me cold.

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 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.