Official optimism

 

"Aniara" is a Swedish film first released in 2019. A version with English titles does exist. The film is freely based on Harry Martinsson´s epic poem "Aniara" from 1956, which I have reviewed previously. Martinsson´s pessimistic story about a rescue mission forever lost in space actually rendered the author a Nobel literature prize. Adapting a modern epic poem for the blue screen is presumably a hard bargain, and the 2019 film will probably be neither better nor worse than any other attempt. A working knowledge of the book *might* be a good idea to really understand the plot (the little there is of such).

"Aniara" is more about moods and atmosphere than actual plot or character development. In the film, the space ship Aniara looks like a leisure cruise, and most of the passangers are pretty well off, making the disaster that forces it off course more potent than in Martinsson´s poem, where we learn relatively early that literally everything is in apocalyptic decline, not just Earth but also the Mars colony which is Aniara´s intended destination. (The film reveals in only one line that the good life on Mars is just a lie.) 

The rest of the film is spent watching the crew and passangers slowly descend into madness. It´s difficult to make the "story" go on and on for over one hour and a half, and I was frankly bored after a while. The coping mechanisms of the people onboard Aniara turns out to be everything from religion and disco dancing to bizarre sexual orgies. (In the film, but not in the original, two of the lead characters have a lesbian relationship.) The ship´s captain, a virtual paragon of official crank optimism, does his best to keep everyone´s spirit up, while secretly cutting himself. I couldn´t help thinking of some "our" politicians and their press conferences during the recent COVID pandemic... 

Martinsson´s original story was a criticism of the human condition from a kind of pessimistic-existentialist-Buddhist perspective. The space ship Aniara is really a metaphor for humanity, a humanity "off course" towards a certain death in the cosmic night. To Martinsson, nuclear war, overpopulation and totalitarianism were the main dangers. A central part of the story is "Miman", an intelligent computer. In the original epic, Miman has the ability to communicate literally all knowledge in the universe and is worshipped as a god, yet this doesn´t help anyone on the lost ship - presumably a criticism of our science, philosophy and religion. In the film, Miman is more of a pure brainwashing device. In both versions, the sentient machine eventually realizes that humanity is irreparably depraved, and self-destructs! In general, the existential speculations of Martinsson have been played down in the film, and the author´s weird Neo-Swedish or Newspeak is also kept down to a minimum. 

"Aniara" (the movie) ends with the ship finally reaching a habitable Earth-like planet in the constellation of Lyra, but after 4 million years, everyone onboard is long dead. 

There the story ends, and we are left stranded (still on Earth) to mull over the implications...