“A simple trip to Mars will be the journey of a lifetime.”
That’s the tagline for Aniara, an “escape-to-Mars” story that goes haywire very quickly. But that’s not the most interesting thing about this movie.
It’s not often you get a film based on an epic poem, let alone a science-fiction film penned by a Nobel laureate. But that’s what we have here. Sweden’s Harry Martinson wrote the 103-canto namesake work in 1956, telling the tragic story of a massive spaceship carrying refugees from a failing Earth that is knocked off course by space debris. The slow realization that they will never arrive at their new home eventually drives the passengers into an existential crisis. Here’s a sample:
We listen daily to the sonic coins
provided every one of us and played
through the Finger-singer worn on the left hand.
We trade coins of diverse denominations:
and all of them play all that they contain
and though a dyma 1 scarcely weighs one grain
it plays out like a cricket on each hand
blanching here in this distraction-land.
Martinson won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974 along with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson, “for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos.” The award was controversial because both winners were members of the Swedish Academy and presumably voted for themselves. Martinson committed suicide 4 years later in response to the criticism. A sad end.
Aniara has been adapted/referenced in many forms over the years, from progressive metal songs to a televised opera. Imagine that, an actual space opera. This version was directed and written by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, in their feature-film debut, and features Emelie Jonsson (Gentlemen & Gangsters), Arvin Kananian (Spring Tide), and Bianca Cruzeiro (The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared).
The movie opens in the US on May 17, after debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018.
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