ANIARA, The Most Depressing Science Fiction Movie, Ever
I’m gonna SPOIL everything, because I don’t want you to be miserable.
SPOILERS FROM THE NEXT SENTENCE, SO DON’T READ IF YOU WANT TO SEE THIS HORRIFYING MOVIE!
I like depressing movies. I like movies that are merely “downbeat.”
Tarkovsky, Ozu, Peckinpah, Fincher, Bergman.
Movies that get my Two Thumbs Up: REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK…ALIEN 3 (much better than ALIENS)…
I like downbeat science fiction movies, too. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (the one with Veronica Cartwright screaming at the end)…
But this one…
ANIARA is based on a Swedish poem, begins like a Hollywood space disaster movie, and ends millions of years in the future. I’m actually getting bummed just thinking about this thing.
The spaceship Aniara transports passengers from Earth to Mars in three weeks. Our main character is called a Mimarobe, as she controls a device called the Mima, which is used to recreate pleasant memories of Earth during the three-week journey.
ANIARA looks good. It might not have a large budget, but it does a good job of looking expensive. We believe these people are on a ship going through space.
A collision with space debris throws the Aniara off course, and the loss of fuel in the accident means the ship cannot correct course. Aniara is out of control and heading into deep space, never to be seen by humans again. We’re about twenty minutes in.
The passengers spend so much time in the Mima that it shorts out. Now people can’t even escape into their memories of home.
I had hoped this would be a philosophical science fiction film ala SOLARIS, and I supposed it is, if your philosophy is “Life is a great suckage and then thouest die.” The bulk of the movie is about the handful of characters we meet becoming more miserable on a spaceship that’s going nowhere. Metaphor!
As someone who’s always bitching about the lack of serious SF movies, I’m in no position to criticize this movie. I AM writing about it, and longtime readers will recall I only write about things I recommend. But some of my favorite movies are downers that do not actually leave one depressed. Movies like 12 MONKEYS, STALKER, SOLARIS and others give you something to go away with that inspires thoughts of hope, of how people could be if they were at their best.
THIS thing, though, is dreary and ends in all of those we’ve seen long dead.
I try not to slam movies and books. I prefer to write about those things I like and want to tell others about.
So, if I hated this thing so much…why am I writing about it?
What did I LIKE about it?
Ironically, the most depressing part.
As time passes and the passengers and crew accept they will never see their home or their families or friends again, things wind down in predictable ways. Mimarobe connects with a man; she connects with a woman, with whom she has a baby. Mimarobe works up some kind of doohickey that will help the passengers think of something else, which solves nothing. There is a possibility of rescue which, predictably, goes nowhere — if they were saved, this would be mocked as Hollywood trash. Life sucks, how dare you offer the audience even a few seconds of hope of rescue!
Death and suicide follow, but little Hollywood spectacle. Even a low-key space movie like PASSENGERS fits in some special effects and some exploding and some crying by the end. But ANIARA just winds down over the course of a very painful hour, until we reach the last two, brief segments.
In the twenty-fouth year of the voyage, the ship is now a black silhouette–this was the most memorable image in the film for me, a massive spaceship still moving, but dead. A few people, maybe the very last survivors, sit together in a dimly-lit room. The religious thread running through the film comes through strongest here, as a woman talks about sunlight. The Mimarobe is barely conscious.
Five million years later, the dead ship is in orbit around a planet that looks like Earth. Maybe it could support human life. Maybe humans got there ahead of the Aniara.
Whatever, everyone’s dead.
That brief, next-to-last scene is one of the most chilling moments in any science fiction movie. It unflinchingly takes the situation to its logical next step. I did not enjoy this movie, but I give full credit to the movie makers for this scene.
I thought the movie was a downer to this point, but this was much, much worse.
And…it was thrilling.
Those of us who enjoy horror literature and film live for moments like this: We are brought face to face with the worst, and we get through it.
Now that I’ve thoroughly spoiled the whole thing for you, maybe you won’t see it and be miserable.
My job here is done!
