This is a cathedral built on quicksand. It is ornate and beautiful, but the lack of a foundation dooms it to failure. It just reeks of a hyper-artsy vision of how to make art using scientific concepts as metaphors, though without understanding them fully.
ANIARA has plenty going for it — a great concept, a coherent tone, an uncompromising vision, and an ending that’s the ballsiest thing I’ve seen since AI. Sadly these virtues are undercut by some unforgivable sins — it is boring, has underdeveloped characters, and has a childlike understanding of the scientific concepts supposedly undergirding the plot. One of those could be forgivable, but all together they spell doom.
ANIARA (2018) Written and directed by Pella Kågerman, Hugo Lilja. Starring Emelie Jonsson, Arvin Kananian, Bianca Cruzeiro, Anneli Martini, Jennie Silfverhjelm, Peter Carlberg, Emma Broomé. ANIARA screened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2019 San Francisco Film Festival.
4 stars out of 10
During the film, I stepped in feces, which was unexpected and unappreciated.
[…] Film Threat: “A great concept, a coherent tone, an uncompromising vision, and an ending that’s the ballsiest thing I’ve seen since AI. Sadly these virtues are undercut by some unforgivable sins – it is boring.” Rated 4 of 10. […]
I was totally engaged from start to finish. I guess the metaphor worked for me. I felt like I was watching the dark truth of where we are now as a species. Donald Trump is the space junk that blindsided us. Now any opportunity overcome climate change is in the past, squandered on a few trinkets for the .01%. We are drifting toward oblivion. I thought the movie was masterfully done and I hope it gets a wide release. All of North America should see it.
Honestly, who’d bring politics into a discussion about a political film that exists in the real world, where there are politics. It’s not as though failures of leadership are a theme in this movie.
Donald Trump? You are weak minded delusional if you think 1 person “blindsided” everything. Keep your nonsensical political views out of a movie review…
As in the case of Hitler (Trump), one person who blindsided a nation with the help of a few million despicable Germans(Americans)