Aniara
“Hell is other people,” goes the Sartre quote, a thought that gets thoroughly examined in the Swedish Aniara, a gorgeous and relentlessly bleak science-fiction film in which the sun-scarred residents of a climate-ravaged Earth board a massive spaceship to begin a “happy, new life on Mars.” Naturally, a collision promptly knocks the ship off course, sending it drifting into the infinite void. Based on Harry Martinson’s 1956 poem, and with echoes of Solaris and The Three-Body Problem, Aniara follows the doomed, miserable ship into the black abyss, where nothing really matters—but really, how’s that any different from living on Earth? For those onboard with its brutal fatalism, Aniara is remarkable—but for everyone else, here’s a reminder that Rocket Racoon and Captain Marvel are also on movie screens at the moment, exploring a cosmos that offers slightly less existential terror.
by Erik Henriksen