IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h 46m, rated 6.3 by 14,000 cineastes.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Sweden.
Verdict: No exit!
Tagline: IKEA to the stars.
It is well thumbed script since When Worlds Collide (1951): Humanity is leaving the dying Earth for Mars, and here it is again. However, while previous manifestations of this theme have a handful of pioneers in pressure suits buckled into Qantas economy seats without saltine crumbs or even an inflight magazine, this version has a multitude of immigrants in a spaceship IKEA for the three week voyage to Mars. There are twenty restaurants, a dozen cinemas, gyms, libraries, the mandatory wellness centre, a shopping mall, spas and saunas, hair salons, and, yes, a holodeck. It is a gigantic cruise ship with thousands of passengers.
Of course, it is all too good to be true, and within a few minutes one of the front tyres blows — hit by a meteor — and the ship, Aniara, loses power. It will now drift, drift, and drift. The mean scriptwriter denies them any rescue, and they drift on and on. (Why Swedes would give this ship a Greek name is never explained within my attention span. Cul de Sac or Huis Clos would have been a better title.)
Tensions follow: the captain combines being dogmatically optimistic with terminal boredom, while the protagonist, a 360-degree Bill Clinton empath mind-melding with the computer and who feels everyone’s pain, except mine at the attenuated proceedings. At least there is no Greta preaching about our Earthly sins.
What follows for the bulk of the runtime is a study of individual reactions to shopping without end in the maze of this interplanetary IKEA store from which there is no exit. A few straws are grasped but no salvation occurs and years pass though none of the actors appear to age. Is that a result of the relativity of time? As the years roll by, the population of the spaceship re-enact the idiocy of Earth. There is sexual dalliance, irresponsibility, cults, gangs, litter, false prophets, destructive fashions, flared trouser legs, pointless conflicts, dumped share bikes, demagogues, and other instances of the decline of civilisation. The end. Solaris indeed.
Downbeat. Very Ingmar Bergman. Dreary.
* * *
It is based on a 1957 epic poem! That in turn was the basis for an opera in 1959 which was then filmed in 1960. Yes, it was a space opera; it was also dead boring. The poem runs to 160-pages and the Swedish Academy, of Nobel Prize fame, ruled it the second most important book published in Swedish in the Twentieth Century, later awarding the author a Nobel Prize. What was number one? Pippi Longstocking?
There are at least two other films on the IMDb with the same name, making four versions in all, two of which I have not been able thus far to locate. Tips welcomed about the 1986 and 2023 variants. The four are listed below for those who have to see to believe.
Aniara (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27202841/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_3
Aniara (2018) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7589524/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1
Aniara (1986) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31049966/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_4
Aniara (1960) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164346/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_2