Aniara is a Swedish science fiction film based on a 1956 epic poem by Harry Martinson. I'd never heard of it, but it's a pretty big deal: It won a Nobel prize, and SF luminaries such as Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson and Vernor Vinge were apparently fans.
In any case, I'm glad they adapted it into a film. It's a bleakly existentialist (is there any other type of existentialist?) nightmare that enjoys nothing more than stabbing you in the emotional nuts repeatedly. All the Swedes I know have a very healthy sense of black humour, and I imagine they find this movie delightful.
So, what is it about?
Aniara is a Swedish- oh, wait, I've already said that. Ahem. Aniara is a spaceship; A floating city that ferries humans between a dying earth and colonies in Mars. It's more than a little bit like a giant cruise liner; Its passengers can expect amenities, shopping malls, a large auditorium, pools and a MIMA room, among other things. (MIMA is a sort of holodeck analogue room where passengers can 'hook up' and revisit places from their memories as vivid illusions. Most people ignore it at first, I imagine like VR parlours in our time, but it becomes important later).
The mission to mars soon goes wrong when the ship is thrown off-course after an encounter with some space debris; Aniara, and all the souls aboard, are sent hurtling out of the solar system and into the void.... with no hope of going back or of being rescued.
People turn to MIMA at first, and later to other, more bizarre ways to pass the time. This, by the way, includes pretty graphic and not very fun-looking cultish orgies.
The film follows the ship's MIMA operator (Emelie Garbers). Thanks to her role (and she's only ever known by her job title, Mimaroben) she has a front row to a few important events aboard the ship. Later she falls in love, has a child, and in general tries to lead a good life and present a brave face against heartbreak and an ultimately futile existence. Hmmm.
While she may be the point of view character, the real heart of the movie for me is the Astronomer (Anneli Martini, and yes, her character never gets a proper name either). She is introduced earnestly saying she doesn't care that everyone on earth is dying: "I've never been very impressed by people," she declares. The quote at the start of this post is hers as well, trying to articulate just how insignificant the Aniara is to the universe.
The Astronomer is the one that constantly finds fault with the lies other people try to find comfort in, the one who is brutally realistic about their fate. No prizes awarded for guessing where that will get her, and no prizes awarded for guessing whether she's right or not.
While the budget is obviously not huge, it's very well utilized by the directing team of Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja (who also adapted Martinson's poem for the screen). The designs are good (loved the space elevator with advertisements along the bottom!), the cinematography is clean and almost stately, and the actors are uniformly excellent.
Speaking as a hard sci-fi pedant, the science part of the genre equation itself is a little suspect: The technologies involved are extremely handwavy, entropy doesn't seem to be as active as you'd expect given some of the time periods involved, and the ship does go through a very Star Trek weird shiny pink cloud at one point... But none of this matters because the sci-fi ethos is very much present in the thrust of the story. This is ruthless, unflinching speculation, without the concessions you might expect from something meant as entertainment.
All this might make Aniara sound like a chore to watch, but I didn't find it so at all. It's a bit ponderous but there are enough events and developments to keep the forward momentum going. And maybe a little pitch-black humour to leaven things up a little... if you squint. Right up until the bold gallows humour of the final chapter's title card.
Turns out the film isn't very impressed by people, either.