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Aniara (2018) - Space is full of our fears

"Aniara" (2018) is ostensibly a scifi film about a passenger ship en route to Mars that goes off course. Think "Avenue 5" (2020) but with less Hugh Laurie wit, Josh Gad mania and no comedic electricity from Jessica St Clair or Zach Woods.

"Aniara" is based on an epic poem - and it explores how humanity, set adrift in the cosmos, struggles to find a path to purpose.  The narrative is centered on a woman who operates an AI Virtual Reality machine which provides an immersion therapy for people who are trapped on the ship - it fills them with a sense of paradise that they ultimately have to be unplugged from to face the existential dread reality of the sarcophagus they are on. The woman, Mimarobe, is earnest trying to make the best of what she is given. She is flawed - she is treated unfairly - she finds love - she faces grievous loss. All the while, she perseveres.

I see her as a Job like character. Not exactly: she never gets angry at God and she doesn't receive a double portion in the end. No sackcloth or boils. But she faithfully acts out her role in time and space caring for her fellow travelers. She is no saint - she felt very real and representative of the life many people expect. She understood her plight from the circumstances she was in, but she kept lifting up and carrying on the best she could with what she had. She had plenty of opportunity (encouragement even) to give up and die, but Mimarobe chooses to honor the life she was given. Her refusal to yield to despair felt almost sacred.

Space isn’t filled with aliens or black holes — it’s filled with ourselves. Our trauma, our longings, our need for meaning. Some define their meaning in a fiction.  Others give it over to a compulsion they endure.  Some never find it and give up. But some rise - called to be present: whole, messy and joyous with others. 

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