Aniara (2018) is a Swedish sci-fi film written and directed by Hugo Lilja and Pella Kågerman. It is an adaptation of the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson. It depicts a dystopian, distant future in which extreme climate change, war, famine, disease, social collapse, pollution, and lawlessness force humans to leave Earth. Commercial space travel is feasible at this point, and those who can afford it can board a cruise-like spaceship to the new Earth colony on Mars, leaving those on Earth behind to live in squalor.
The deluxe spaceship, like many luxury cruise liners, includes a casino, a clubbing space, a movie theatre, a swimming pool, a gym, a spa, restaurants, and other amenities. One of the key amenities is the ‘Mima Room’, a virtual reality therapy room where passengers can enjoy a fully immersive, virtual-reality simulation of Earth as it used to be – when it was verdant, lush, and paradisiacal. Mima, the AI system, creates these simulations based on passengers’ memories of Earth. The unnamed protagonist (Emelie Garbers) is named only as ‘MR’ in the film; this stands for ‘Mimarobe’, which is the person in charge of guiding the use of Mima.
The journey to Mars takes three weeks (certainly a more manageable journey time than the estimated 7–10 months journey with current technology). These future voyages are commonplace, so no one is anxious about the journey when boarding Aniara. However, around a week after takeoff, the ship is forced to dodge some space debris; this manoeuvre leads to the ship’s nuclear plant being destroyed by a chunk of metal. The reactor melts down. To avoid a catastrophic explosion from occurring, the captain gets rid of all the nuclear fuel. Now, with no fuel, and no way to steer, the ship is forced to stray off course – it heads into the unknown, the endless void.
Captain Chifone (Arvin Kananian) informs the passengers, via a mass video announcement, that the ship will use a passing planet’s gravitational field to send them back to Earth – but the wait will take one or two years. Panic ensues. But the ship’s astronomer (Anneli Martini) knows there are no nearby planets. The ship is completely stranded in space. No one will survive.
What stands out to me about this film is how it conveys the feeling of ‘cosmic anxiety’: this is the type of anxiety, fear, dread, and panic that would manifest during space travel. In Aniara, being surrounded by the never-ending void leads to a state of intense distress. The film shows us Aniara’s passengers at different points during the endless voyage: at first, every year, then every couple of years, then 10 years, and then 24 years (by this time, only a few surviving passengers remain). The more time that goes on, the worse the psychological decline.
The astronomer provides a central metaphor in the film. She holds up her drinking glass to MR, showing her a tiny bubble, and explains:
You see this bubble? If you think of it as Aniara, maybe you’ll understand the vastness of space. You see, the bubble actually moves through the glass. Infinitely slowly. We move forward in the same way. Even if we drift at an incredible speed, it’s as if we’re standing perfectly still. That’s us: A little bubble in the glass of Godhead.
This kind of metaphor – framing the ship as ‘a little bubble in the glass of Godhead’ – conveys the sheer vastness of the cosmos and our insignificance in comparison to it. Philosophers have referred to the feeling we get when we contextualise ourselves in this way as the sublime. Another term for this emotion is awe. But the cosmic sublime, or cosmic awe, is often a positive (or mostly positive) feeling: when you go stargazing, shrink under the canopy above, and become stunned by the vastness of space, this is an awe-inspiring experience, but typically a positive one. In Aniara, in contrast, the feeling is purely negative: the characters experience anxiety when faced with the cosmic void.
Crucially, to experience the sublime (or awe), there has to be a certain level of attraction involved. This requires one to feel safe enough to admire the vast or powerful phenomenon on display, without feeling in physical danger. In Aniara, this safety is missing, so the experience of the sublime does not occur. The threat of space is present. The passengers lack the safety of groundedness (e.g. being on Earth while stargazing); instead, they have been abandoned in space, with no guarantee of return to the feeling of groundedness and safety. Space becomes their prison – their life sentence – rather than something to be admired from a safe viewing platform.
After three years, Mima becomes one of the most important ways to keep people calm on the ship. But with so many people bringing their horrific memories of Earth’s destruction to Mima, the system becomes overwhelmed – it announces that “there is no protection from mankind” – and so it deliberately self-destructs. MR is blamed for Mima’s suicide and is imprisoned. Isagel (Bianca Cruzeiro), a pilot on the ship and lover to MR, is also imprisoned following a physical conflict with Captain Chefone regarding the punishment of MR.
To deal with cosmic anxiety, cults develop on the spaceship. Members of one cult repeat in unison, “Come closer. Give us light.” They hope for light in the darkness, but other characters have abandoned hope. The astronomer experiences pessimism and futility; she deals with the situation through alcoholism. Many suicides occur. For one case of suicide, the diagnosis given was that he was “frightened of space”. Cosmic anxiety can turn into cosmic terror. In one scene, we see MR look out into space, and she has to turn away because of the panic it induces. She retreats into the Mima Room to soothe herself with a calming Earth experience – a walk through the woods.
In the fourth year, which is when the mass suicides and cults appear, MR and Isagel are granted release and reassigned to work. They join a fertility cult dedicated to Mima, and Isagel becomes pregnant after an orgy. She experiences depression during her pregnancy and feels her child should not be born into the reality she is living through. Isagel says, “I don’t want to live here”, “There are no possibilities here”, “I’ll give birth to a prisoner”, “I’ll deliver someone to eternal light”.
MR wants to build a “beam-screen” outside the windows of the ship – a projection device acting as a replacement for Mima – to alleviate Isagel and other passengers’ depression. The aim of it, as MR says, is “To escape the darkness”, to be “shielded off from space”. But Captain Chefone forbids the plan; instead, he orders her to focus on educating the children, in the hope that one or more of them may find a way to return them to Mars.
By the sixth year, we see the astronomer lament about how the ship is “a sarcophagus… a coffin”. MR works on making the beam-screen a reality, and she succeeds in projecting a waterfall scene that surrounds the entirety of the ship, creating the illusion of a world outside, rather than just the blackness of space. But this salve isn’t enough to keep hope alive in the passengers. At year 10, MR notices that the captain’s wrists are bandaged, presumably from a suicide attempt. In year 24 of the voyage, MR and a few other survivors sit in a dimly lit room. An unidentified woman waxes lyrical about the divine power of sunlight on Earth. “Give us light,” she says. No one responds. This is the last time we see anyone alive.
The final scene takes place 5,981,407 years into Aniara’s voyage, where the ship reaches the constellation Lyra and passes an Earth-like planet, verdant and welcoming. But, of course, by this point, no one is alive to celebrate the return to habitability.
In his review of the film for Variety, Dennis Harvey writes, “This tale of a spaceship stuck wandering the cosmos after being forced off course is both impressive in its scope and intimate in its portrait of human nature under long-term duress.” In his review for Senses of Cinema, Wheeler Winston Dixon notes, “Sophie Winqvist’s cinematography perfectly matches the fatalistic mood that the film requires.” He adds, “Aniara is linked to the work of Ingmar Bergman, Carl Th. Dreyer, and Robert Bresson, examining the innermost details of the human psyche in crisis with a calm, reflective gaze.”
Several sci-fi films have portrayed the theme of ‘cosmic emptiness’ or ‘cosmic loneliness’ in a convincing way, but Aniara is unique in its focus on the more panicked, anxiety-ridden states of mind that may crop up when people are set adrift in space. Yet, like other sci-fi films, the longing for the return to Earth is also a recurrent theme. As Dixon observes:
Although we know that Earth is a charred wreck of a planet and the Mars colony awaits, we want to return anyway – even if our home has been destroyed and almost nothing is left for us there. Surely something or someone will come to our rescue. That’s the conventional narrative.
The cosmic anxiety experienced in space is connected to this planetary form of homesickness. The anxiety also partly emerges from the sense of not being able to return to Earth; it is the sickness of being cosmically lost. It is the anxiety one would feel if dropped into the middle of the ocean, in which one wants to see and return to land, but there is no sign of either. It is the anxiety of endless emptiness.
Watching Aniara may give you a vicarious feeling of cosmic anxiety, but it might also (particularly on reflection) lead to a feeling of gratitude for being grounded on Earth, and for the natural surroundings on Earth we can still enjoy. Aniara’s warning about the psychological perils of long-term space travel is tied to its warning about the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems. If our planet becomes uninhabitable for humans, then we may be forced to leave it (likely to live in a colony on Mars instead). But beyond the difficulties in actually colonising and living on Mars, to leave Earth for good means to experience grief for the loss of it, and perhaps a constant anxious feeling born out of the need to return to it. To let Earth fall into disrepair means we may have to face the emptiness of space (if living on another planet is technologically possible at that point). While this does make the experience of cosmic awe possible, the danger of cosmic anxiety will always lurk around the corner.
Aniara’s most impressive achievement, in my mind, is in its portrayal of how the human psyche would react when confronted with cosmic emptiness and the uncertainty (and then certainty) around whether landing safely somewhere is possible. It is a bleak film, but again, in its bleakness, I think one can come to better appreciate being on Earth. During an interview, Lilja said:
[Aniara] is of course bleak and pessimistic. But we think the optimism comes from the fact that we’re not on Aniara yet. That’s what we want to convey. That’s what we like about the story – there are quite a few science fiction films that begin with Earth ending, and people having to leave Earth. But in the end they almost always find a new home, or build a new one, by some technological miracle. Aniara is really quite unique in that the premise is: if we destroy Earth, we’re fucked. We can recreate life for a while, but it won’t be worth it.
In the same interview, Kågerman describes the film as “[d]efinitely a warning”. She adds, “I think Harry Martinson described it as a warning even back in the ‘50s when he wrote it, but now it has become even more real. Now I don’t even think it’s a warning – it’s a scream.” And when asked what’s the scream about, Kågerman replied, “It’s about the Climate Crisis”. In John Hillcoat’s 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006), we see what an apocalyptic situation might look like on Earth, as a consequence of the climate crisis. But in Aniara, we see that escaping this situation is not really an escape; it’s just an entry into another inhospitable environment. The film makes it even more apparent why the natural world needs to be protected.
