This Swedish drama set on a spaceship heading to Mars sees AI facilitating our worst excesses Most predictions about the future of artificial intelligence suggest two possibilities: AI will either make us immortal or it will hasten our extinction. _Aniara_ posits a third option: the unredeemable awfulness of humanity drives an artificial intelligence to suicide. From the country that gave us Greta Thunberg comes a staggering sci-fi eco parable set on a transport ship from a scorched Earth to a dormitory settlement on Mars. _Aniara_ (the name comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “despairing”) is based on a 1956 epic poem from the Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson and explores the end of humanity in capsule form. And when we go, according to this wildly ambitious debut feature from writing and directing team Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, it will be not with a bang but with a mindless plod of consumerism, a flailing grasp for meaning and the occasional space orgy. One of many massive ships used to ferry the remains of the human race (or at least those lucky enough to buy a chance of a new life) from Earth to Mars, the Aniara is essentially a galactic shopping mall. It’s like the ship from _WALL-E_ viewed through the prism of Tarkovsky’s _Solaris_. Continue reading...
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