If you were to condense all of SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica late ‘00s reboot into a single film, the result would be Aniara. Adapted by the film’s co-directors, Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, from a 1956 epic poem by Swedish writer, Harry Martinson, it follows the titular ship on what might be its last journey. After a single bolt of space trash knocks the Aniara off its three-week course to Mars and depletes its fuel, the passengers struggle to come to terms with the possibility that they may never get back on course. It’s a thrilling, engaging premise and the film doesn’t shy away from all the messy narrative implications.
However, when the film starts, it’s at the literal and figurative end of the story — not the characters’– but ours. As the credits roll, we watch the environmental destruction of Earth. On some level, it’s our first clue to the allegory the film is using, but it’s also an efficient way to tell the audience where humanity stands when the film starts. Earth has become a hostile place, if the many passengers with burn scars are any indication, and it makes sense that the Aniara’s job is to shuttle people to a new, only slightly less harsh planet.
Our entry point into Kågerman and Lilja’s world is Mimaroben (Emelie Jonsson), who we first meet boarding what looks like a glorified space elevator from Earth’s surface to the waiting Aniara. Though the technology sounds incredible, the directors are smart to keep their vision of the future grounded in our own experience — not least because the CGI they use to render their world isn’t the most advanced. When the vessel docks, we hear the usual airplane seatbelt sign go off. The Aniara resembles nothing so much as a cruise ship or moving mall and through Jonsson’s inquisitive gaze, we learn everything we need about the ship with little exposition.
That said, Mimaroben, or more frequently MR, isn’t traveling for pleasure. Instead, this is her maiden voyage as the operator of an intelligent simulator that hypnotizes the passengers into seeing visions of Earth as it used to be. When she first arrives, the “Mima” machine is barely used, largely ignored in favor of the arcade, bars and nightclub also onboard. However, that begins to change once the ship is knocked off course with no concrete hope of correction. As more and more people use the sentient device, it becomes clear that the escape the Mima provides is integral to keeping the passengers in check. So, a few years in, when the Mima begins speak and project apocalyptic images into the users’ minds because of overuse, it seems only a matter of time before the film devolves into chaos.
However, though convention would lead us to suspect that MR’s struggle to keep the Mima operational despite a dismissive ship’s captain and increasing hostility from the passengers will create the film’s drama, what makes Aniara so compelling is that the Mima’s potential failure is only one threat to the ship’s tenuous existence. Though the fact that the ship will run out of food in a matter of months and the crew fears the passengers will react badly to learning they’ll have to live off the algae that grows naturally in their water system are easy to understand, things like why the lights seem dimmed and the passengers now use more blankets to sleep (both suggestions that systems are operating at lower capacity to conserve resources) are perhaps only clear to those familiar with the genre’s tropes.
Still, part of the reason Kågerman and Lilja don’t bother to explain every bit of science is that the actual sci-fi elements aren’t their true concern. Rather, the genre’s plot devices are all in service of their exploration of human hope and hopelessness in the face of almost certain death. As the directors throw in one logical result of long-term space travel after another, they don’t shy away from the nastiness this situation would create in its characters.
With each new title card that marks how much time has passed and offers a title that foreshadows what’s about to happen, we watch things devolve. In Year 3, we see the captain, Chefone (Arvin Kananian), become mad with power in a section titled “The King”. In the aftermath of the Mima’s rebellion in Year 4, we see that cults have begun to dominate the ship and there are so many suicides per month that the crew is forced to put the children to work. Each jump in time brings a new milieu and it’s impressive to watch the film make each daring narrative move in a matter of minutes.
Aniara is an ambitious film to say the least. In 106 minutes, Kågerman and Lilja cover four seasons’ worth of Battlestar Galactica-level plotting. Non sci-fi fans may be left struggling to understand the narrative tropes at play, but for viewers already attuned to these plots, the film is a masterclass in efficient storytelling. It never shies away from the premise’s grim realities and it continuously uses those plot points to explore the ways people come to terms with their mortality. It’s a brutalizing watch, but a rewarding one.
