@Scandinavian Film Festival – Palace Nova Cinemas
Review by Geoff Jenke
The 2019 Scandinavian Film Festival celebrates new films from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark. It will showcase a strong line up including contemporary dramas, comedies and crime thrillers.
The Sci-Fi movie Aniara is based on an epic and prophetic poem by Swedish Nobel Prize winner Harry Martinson. Directors Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja’s have taken this poem and made an astonishing and apocalyptic movie.
ANIARA is one of many spaceships used for transporting Earth’s fleeing population to their new home planet, Mars. Aboard the luxury spaceship, a colony of materialistic and consumption obsessed humans are bound for the promised land of Mars where family and friends are waiting for them. When the ship is struck by flying space debris, it is knocked off course and the inhabitants are left to float in space until they can catch the orbit of a celestial body to get back on course.
But as time passes, the deceitful captain’s reassurance’s that they will reach their destination wear thin and the once hopeful occupants begin to unravel, along with the orderly society inside their bubble of civilisation.
It becomes very quickly apparent that this is a movie that is not going to end well. It is a bleak, dark movie, atmospherically held together by a brilliant soundtrack. Shots linger on the despair and hopeless situations adding to the haunting reality.
As the movie builds the viewer will have many conclusions as to which way things will go developing in the mind. However, things never really come to the expected conclusion. The movie just moves to the only conclusion it can.
As man continues to indulge in every material amenity they can grasp while Aniara journeys to the unknown, the warning is obvious. There is only one Earth and this captive tale is a metaphor for humans to take responsibility for our actions.
While there are a few questions left unanswered, like how do they continue to power the ship, this is a must-see film if a fan of science fiction. I did see a few homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey, whether intentional or not, but that is not a bad thing.
I think the phrase “a long strange trip” has been used for a movie before, but it applies to this movie.
A wonderful ambitious film.
Limited screenings at Palace Nova East End and Prospect Cinemas till August 5th
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