‘Aningaaq’ Short Film Complements ‘Gravity’

Alfonso Cuaron, the director of the smash hit space adventure “Gravity” has released a companion live action short called “Aningaaq” which serves as a companion piece to the larger movie.

Some spoilers may follow.

In a crucial seen in “Gravity” Dr. Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock, finds herself in a Russian Soyuz attempting to contact Mission Control in Houston. Instead she picks up a male voice speaking in an unknown foreign language. A dog barks and a baby cries in the background as Stone struggles to make herself understood and at the same time contemplates her own death 200 miles above the Earth.

“Aningaaq” serves as the other half of the conservation. It seems that Dr. Stone has contacted an Inuit fisherman in a camp in the snowy regions of Greenland. He can no more understand what the woman on the other side of the radio transmission is saying that she can what he is saying.

But the unknown fisherman is also contemplating death. His favorite sled dog, which he loves as a long term companion, is very sick and is dying in agony. He must end the animal’s pain by putting it down, but he is loath to do so, because he will miss his dog friend. But at the end of the conversation, just as Stone is seemingly reconciled with her own death, the fisherman is also at peace with what he must do.

The short subject was created guerilla style in Iceland with a small cast and crew of about ten. It was meant to be an extra in the DVD version of “Gravity.” But now “Aningaaq” has picked up its own following, having been screened at a number of film festivals. It will now be submitted for an Academy Award for best live action short, making a little history as “Gravity” will likely also be up for best picture.

In the meantime, “Gravity” has opened in China in a huge, for that country, box office. Part of the plot of the movie involves an abandoned Chinese space station and a Chinese spacecraft known as the Shenzhou.