A Life Worth Surviving: Reflections on Aniara (2018)
By: Nirinda Niatiansya
Tags: Movie, Movie Review, Aniara, SciFi, Review

(This content contains spoilers)

How would you survive when you know there’s no chance of survival? Aniara, a Swedish movie about a spaceship bringing people to escape a disaster-ridden Earth and build a new civilization on Mars, carrying this message and prompting us to try and answer it.

Poster design by Gravillis on impawards.com

The 2018 movie was the adaptation of a poem written by Harry Martinson in 1956. Directed by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, the movie primarily set on a spaceship — which basically mimics a luxurious mall/hotel — routinely transport people to Mars from Earth within 3 weeks time. At the center of our story is an employee of Aniara named Mimarobe. Her nickname actually came from her job, which was operating MIMA, an AI-like computer program that feeds people pleasant images based on their memories of the Earth as it was before the disasters — caused primarily by climate change — made it inhabitable. MIMA served as some sort of therapy, providing a sanctuary for people who are trying to adapt to their new life in a new home away from Earth.

What I find interesting about MIMA is how dependent humans are to Earth. Not only physically — namely having oxygen to breathe, or water, or the “right” level of gravity, etc — but also emotionally. We see the memories they held so fondly of the Earth such as the sounds of birds chirping, the waterfall, walking barefoot in a forest, eating berries from the tree. It was after all the only home we’ve ever known. Uniquely, the circumstances which drove them to escape it and continue life on another planet was “supposed” to be the end of it all. The end of the home and the inhabitants in it. But nevertheless humans persisted and simply refused to die, so they built a life-supporting “mini-planet” to transport them to a new home. A hopeful beginning amid a disastrous ending.

This admirable attempt may sound like an idyllic idea, an inspirational story of perseverance and resilience humans possess. They were trying to stay alive and stay hopeful. They gained knowledge and applied it to survive despite everything. They were doing their best. They most likely looked at previous species that went extinct and thought to themselves, “That’s not gonna be us. We’re gonna save ourselves from the end of the world.”

But when things went haywire and we no longer have control over how things may go, what’s gonna save us from the end of the world then? What’s gonna save us from ourselves? When an accident happened that caused Aniara to stray off course and the pilots were no longer able to steer the ship, what came afterwards was an attempt teetering between perseverance and obstinacy, resilience and stubbornness. The Captain tried to calm the passengers down by saying that they could use the gravitational force of a celestial body they may encounter to slingshot them back on track to Mars. One caveat though, their journey that was supposed to take three weeks, now may be extended to not more than two years.

Floating off in space with no map and no direction whatsoever left them with no option but to just keep going. There will be a celestial body that could help them, right? Wrong. An Astronomer, who was Mimarobe’s roommate in the ship, told her that there was no celestial body that could help them. They won’t be able to use any gravitational force to help them get back on course. Not in three weeks, not in two years, not in ever. This was where Mimarobe (and myself as a viewer) realized how lost they are. The vastness of the space is one that is unimaginable, and there was no way to Waze their way through it. While they were able to generate oxygen and food within the ship, no one really knew how long it would last, and how long they would need it to last.

The rest of the film showed us how the passengers of Aniara coped with their seemingly impending doom. MIMA was no longer operating, having been semi-sentient she self-destructed because she couldn’t handle the amount of people needing her service all the time. One of the passengers, of course, formed a cult. Mimarobe, which was portrayed as cheery and hopeful, must deal with her partner Isagel, one of the pilots, who fell into deep depression after giving birth inside the ship. Several of the passengers committed suicide. The Captain, refusing to be honest to the passengers about their reality, became more and more egotistical and made questionable decisions which resulted in murdering the Astronomer. Some turned to drugs and alcohol, and some resorted to violence.

After 25 years of floating off in space, we saw some of Aniara’s remaining passengers sitting in a circle, inside what seemed to be the wrecked MIMA hall. The rest of the ship is unattended. Grief-stricken Mimarobe after Isagel’s death was seen here getting old, no longer happy and cheery like she used to be. Someone recited, “On Earth, I saw the light with my skin.” proving once again that even after 25 years, there’s still no place like home. They were waiting for the end that never comes, the end they tried so hard to avoid.

The ship went on for years and decades and at the end of it, millions of years had passed until Aniara finally approached a celestial body they had been dreaming about, a seemingly habitable planet in the Lyra constellation. Named after “lyre”, a musical instrument resembling a small harp, the Lyra constellation did seem like it was serenading hopeful songs of shelter, and most importantly, survival. Alas, it had been millions of years since Aniara left Earth, and the ship now merely a carcass reeking of humanity’s futile attempts and dashed dreams. Even if by some miracle someone might still be alive in the ship, they wouldn’t have been able to safely land the gigantic spaceship on the planet. That, and it was still unknown if it was habitable at all. All that we, as the viewers, know is that the planet resembles the home that they missed so terribly, Earth.

Ott and Broman (1988), in an article in the International Planetarium Society, stated that Aniara was an effort to “[mediate] between science and poetry, between the wish to understand and the difficulty to comprehend”*. I personally agree with this notion. There is something admirable about watching the length mankind will go to just to prevent eradication. I prefer this interpretation over a claim that the name of the ship, Aniara, came from an ancient Greek word ἀνιαρός, meaning “sad, despairing” in the 2005 Italian edition of the poem^. For me, it was not a story of despair. It was a story of strong will and even stronger refusal to die. Whether it was a selfish belief of humanity’s made up self-importance, or a romantic attempt to preserve one’s life and its meaning, the point of the story is that they found it very difficult to give in and accept their doom. They didn’t want to give up when the Earth shattered and no longer welcome them. They had no choice but to make the best of it when the ship went off course, no matter how morally strange their actions could be at times.

Moments before MIMA imploded and wrecked, she recited a morbid speech and cautioned them of their ultimate fate. She talked about “prolonging the very second when you burst” won’t change “how grim it always is, one’s detonation”. Stretching the moment of their deaths is completely pointless. She gave up, and she gave a warning that they probably should, too. But then what happened afterwards was that some passengers organized a cult that worshipped MIMA. They relied so much on the dreamy images of Earth MIMA fed them to keep them sane and hopeful, that they wanted to keep her alive for much longer, even if it was only in their prayers, as if MIMA would eventually come back and save them. Once again, showing their strong-headedness and refusal to let go.

A great deal of suffering might come from stubbornness, but a huge chance of survival might also come from it. We couldn’t help but to empathize and wonder, what would we do? If we were one of the passengers, how would we deal with it? How would we deal with the prospects of starting a new life on Mars? How would we deal with the news that the pilots were no longer able to steer the ship? How would we deal with the fact that we were moving slowly but surely to our deaths and there was nothing out there that could save us? This was after all, our attempt to save ourselves. But as MIMA said, lest we forget, “There is protection from nearly everything”, but “there is no protection from mankind”.

It was sad, and it was despairing, but it was also evoking this immense feeling of empathy. It was like watching a baby trying to walk, only to wobble and then fall to the ground. It was like watering a dead plant. It was like staying in a bad situation wishing it would one day change. It seems futile, because it probably is, but we couldn’t help but feel somewhat hopeful. The baby might eventually master the art of walking. The dead plant might only need some water and a little bit of sunshine to jump back into life again. There might be something we could do to actually change the bad situation. There was hope, and when there was hope, there was life. Even if it’s spent floating around for decades in a giant spaceship.