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Aniara (Pella Kågerman 2018)
Swedish sci-fi with a different feel than most big budget, glossy CG Hollywood stuff. I prefer my sci-fi to be varied and I do have a fondness for indie sci fi. I don't know the budget of Aniara but it felt like a smaller budget indie film to me. So I didn't have a problem with the spaceship even though it looked more like a modern shopping mall than a spaceship. We often rank on the overuse of CG and so I can't complain that the real sets didn't look sci-fi enough. I was fine with them.
The first 30 minutes held my attention. In fact I was never bored during the movie and that's a good thing. But once the space accident happened the story then went a half dozen different ways. These story mini arcs were never fully realized or gelled into the main story and so I was constantly disappointed in what never was brought to fruition.
I read that this was based on a 1956 Swedish poem. I'm guessing the film makers felt obligated to be true to the poem. But I never read the poem so I ended up feeling unconnected from the story.
There were cool story aspects that I wanted explored like: The probe they recover, that supposedly contains needed fuel and yet they can't access the hull of the probe. That seemed to be key to the story and yet just when the probe arc got interesting, the film moved onto another chapter. I think those chapter stories are the main weakness of the film. Maybe if this had another hour we could've learned more about the food shortages, the loss of moral, the religious cult group and the authoritative captain of the ship.
Swedish sci-fi with a different feel than most big budget, glossy CG Hollywood stuff. I prefer my sci-fi to be varied and I do have a fondness for indie sci fi. I don't know the budget of Aniara but it felt like a smaller budget indie film to me. So I didn't have a problem with the spaceship even though it looked more like a modern shopping mall than a spaceship. We often rank on the overuse of CG and so I can't complain that the real sets didn't look sci-fi enough. I was fine with them.
The first 30 minutes held my attention. In fact I was never bored during the movie and that's a good thing. But once the space accident happened the story then went a half dozen different ways. These story mini arcs were never fully realized or gelled into the main story and so I was constantly disappointed in what never was brought to fruition.
I read that this was based on a 1956 Swedish poem. I'm guessing the film makers felt obligated to be true to the poem. But I never read the poem so I ended up feeling unconnected from the story.
There were cool story aspects that I wanted explored like: The probe they recover, that supposedly contains needed fuel and yet they can't access the hull of the probe. That seemed to be key to the story and yet just when the probe arc got interesting, the film moved onto another chapter. I think those chapter stories are the main weakness of the film. Maybe if this had another hour we could've learned more about the food shortages, the loss of moral, the religious cult group and the authoritative captain of the ship.