Anni­hi­la­tion

It is said that we know more about out­er space than the deep ocean, a dis­com­fort­ing yet entire­ly plau­si­ble notion that if noth­ing else illus­trates the basic fol­ly of human nature. Loose­ly adapt­ed from Jeff VanderMeer’s sup­pos­ed­ly unfilmable 2014 nov­el – the first vol­ume of the Amer­i­can author’s ​‘South­ern Reach Tril­o­gy’ – Alex Garland’s Anni­hi­la­tion riffs on this curi­ous con­tra­dic­tion while gen­tly prob­ing our hard­wired impulse to con­flate Oth­er­ness with that which pos­es a gen­uine threat to our existence.

This man­i­fests in a lit­er­al sense as a plas­ma-like mem­brane evoca­tive­ly referred to as ​‘The Shim­mer’, the appar­ent result of an alien life form descend­ing on the swamp­lands of south­ern Flori­da. The US gov­ern­ment has clas­si­fied the infect­ed zone ​‘Area X’, as if to covert­ly sig­nal the dis­cov­ery of a mys­te­ri­ous, malig­nant organ­ism. Viewed up close, how­ev­er, this strange envi­ron­ment, with its kalei­do­scop­ic array of fau­na and flo­ra, resem­bles a sort of day­g­lo Eden. Vivid and won­drous and seem­ing­ly des­tined to be spoiled by the hands of men. Or in this case, women.

Much like the march of human progress, it is soon revealed that this pearles­cent sphere is steadi­ly advanc­ing – imag­ine the blast radius of a nuclear explo­sion absorb­ing every­thing in its path, in every direc­tion, only at a frac­tion of the speed. So, a vol­un­teer team con­sist­ing of five female sci­en­tists – a biol­o­gist (Natal­ie Port­man), a psy­chol­o­gist (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh), a para­medic (Gina Rodriguez), a physi­cist (Tes­sa Thomp­son) and a mag­ne­tol­o­gist (Tuva Novot­ny) – are sent in to gath­er what­ev­er data they can. They are told in no uncer­tain terms that they are a last resort.

The char­ac­ters here are giv­en more back­sto­ry than in VanderMeer’s source nov­el, in par­tic­u­lar Portman’s Lena, whose mar­riage to Oscar Isaac’s AWOL solid­er, Kane, emerges as the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion for her phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. Through a series of flash­backs we learn that they have grown apart, and that she blames her­self for his extend­ed absence. But in order to rec­on­cile their dif­fer­ences and recon­nect as a cou­ple, Lena must first become whole again herself.

On one lev­el this is a film about the lim­its of con­trol, about how we spend our time on this earth striv­ing to main­tain bal­ance when chaos so often appears to be the nat­ur­al way of things. On anoth­er it is about iso­la­tion, the feel­ing of being detached, of los­ing touch with those around you. This is most evi­dent with­in The Shim­mer itself, where light and radio waves are refract­ed and scram­bled, effec­tive­ly cut­ting our intre­pid hero­ines off from the out­side world.

As they ven­ture deep­er, it becomes clear that these women are not on the same mis­sion. They seek answers to many of the same ques­tions, yes, but also atone­ment and self-enlight­en­ment on strict­ly per­son­al terms. Each has their own cross to bear, their own sad­ness, their own bat­tle. Con­se­quent­ly, although they may seem strong as a unit, indi­vid­u­al­ly they are sus­cep­ti­ble to The Shimmer’s cor­rupt­ing influ­ence. While they do uncov­er par­tial truths, for the most part sal­va­tion is not forthcoming.

Anni­hi­la­tion wears its fem­i­nist cre­den­tials light­ly, but it does call atten­tion to the intrin­sic link between wom­an­hood and nature through some strik­ing sym­bol­ic imagery, a dark tun­nel lead­ing to a womb-like cham­ber being the most explic­it exam­ple. Fer­til­i­ty, death and rebirth are recur­ring motifs in this cool­ly affect­ing exis­ten­tial para­ble, and shots of cells divid­ing and mutat­ing in micro­scop­ic detail allude to the way that bod­i­ly and men­tal trau­ma can deep­en and spread if left untreated.

Gar­land has craft­ed a world of pro­found beau­ty and com­plex­i­ty, one which bor­rows var­i­ous ideas and images – deft­ly splic­ing togeth­er DNA strands from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalk­er, Vir­ginia Woolf’s ​‘To the Light­house’ and oth­er cin­e­mat­ic and lit­er­ary touch­stones – yet always man­ages to move to its own unique rhythm. And like the director’s ear­li­er cere­bral sci-fi, Ex Machi­na, this one fea­tures an aston­ish­ing dance sequence, a haunt­ing per­for­mance scored to pulse-quick­en­ing per­fec­tion by com­posers Ben Sal­is­bury and Geoff Bar­row. It is a visu­al­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly rich work that offers plen­ty of thrills and sur­pris­es but few easy answers.