I've seen this compared to High Life, a movie I found to be an impenetrable chore to watch. Fortunately, my experience with Aniara was the polar opposite. This is a tale of humanity breaking upon the endless void of space, presented in a hauntingly evocative and bleakly existential fashion. The budget was clearly modest, but those limitations are rarely felt, the movie never seems cheap or as if it's trying to tell a narrative too ambitious for its means.
Aniara is a movie both epic in scope and harrowingly, intimately human. During what should be a routine journey from Earth to Mars, an errant screw sends the titular vessel drifting into the abyss. Days turn to weeks, then years. The vastness of space has rarely seemed so dreadful. Soon the only thing keeping hearts and minds from shattering is Mima, an AI-controlled virtual reality that allows passengers to escape into their memories of Earth. The caretaker of Mima is our viewpoint into the gradual societal breakdown within the ship, the epicenter of its inhabitants' frustrations, fears, and other base emotions.
"Literary" is such a nebulous adjective, but it's apt for how I felt about Aniara when the end credits finally rolled. Apocalyptic backstory, futuristic technology, and uneasy consequences are often presented through implication and visuals rather than exposition. Chapters divide Aniara into a chronicle of agonizingly prolonged doom, each title priming us for a thoughtful vignette set another day, week, year later. Aniara was thrilling like the best sci-fi short stories or novellas, where fascinating ideas work as both concept and allegory, where a daring ending evokes a gasp and reflection.
