Cargo

As with Johnson’s walking dog, the surprise of Cargo, Switzerland’s first science-fiction film, is that it was done at all. An immensely ambitious undertaking, set almost entirely in deep space, on a long-haul cargo ship, the film took nine years to make; but the time and care lavished on it show right there up on the screen, in the incredibly impressive digital environment and highly-detailed production design. Occasionally an effect doesn’t come off (usually the deep space green screen when human figures are involved) but for the most part, the intricacy of the giant space stations and vessels, their movement, and the hard light of deep space are rendered in an astonishingly accomplished and well-imagined manner that bears valid comparison with similar features in 2001. Would that the substance of the film were so sophisticated.

Young medic Laura is on a four-year cargo flight; the crew are in cryo-sleep; but maybe she’s not alone.. The labyrinthine space ship offers several dramatic settings, from the giant cargo-container hold, to the pretty cool cryo-baths, and even a basement-type area dripping with water (why?). Alien and Bladerunner loom large in the look of lived-in-future interiors and synthy score; Aliens contributes a (barely used) girl-child ; and a Matrix set-up underpins the whole plot, such as it is, with a dash of intergalactic eco-terrorism.
Even if not so original, it’s still an interesting concept, the choice between grubby reality and a perfect, if artificial world, but this is so little explored that Laura’s final decision is borderline incomprehensible. And, for all the excellence of the space-ship’s design, the geography between different areas is almost completely ignored, and even in a single location frequently muddled. Occasionally this creates a useful sense of disorientation, but more frequently it is distractingly vague.

Likewise, bursts of action are continually undermined by mistimed edits and spatial confusion, and tension is consistently cut short in the same way: there turns out not to be some monster hiding in the ship, and when the stowaway is discovered, a hugely fertile possible direction for the film to explore is immediately cut off, as though a sub-plot had been brutally excised at the last moment. Smothering it all is the overbearing, heard-it-before synth score, part of a careful but over-emphatic sound design of standard-issue metallic clanks and rumbles. Mediocrity of script, direction, editing, and sound are pretty fatal to any movie, but the remarkable backdrop in Cargo maintains enough good faith to see the viewer through to the (ridiculous) ending, and the immense hard work that went into the incredibly impressive digital design of the film incline one to a certain leniency of judgment. But basically, as the sort of entertaining yet thoughtful sci-fi film it would like to be, it’s just not very good.

d Ivan Engler, Ralph Etter p Marcel Wolfisberg sc Arnold Bucher, Ivan Engler, Patrik Steinmann, Thilo Röscheisen ph Ralph Baetschmann ed Bastien Ahrens, Ivan Engler, Timo Fritsche pd Matthias Noger m Fredrik Strömberg cast Anna Katherina Schwabroh, Martin Rapold, Regula Grauwiller, Yangzom Brauen
(2009, Swi, 112m)