Cargo (2009)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Cargo |
| Country of production | Switzerland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Ivan Engler Ralph Etter |
| script | Arnold Bucher Ivan Engler Thilo Röscheisen Patrik Steinmann |
| production |
Meret Burger Florian Nussbaumer Marcel Wolfisberg |
| music | Fredrik Strömberg |
| camera | Ralph Baetschmann |
| cut | Bastian Ahrens Halina Daugird |
| occupation | |
| |
Cargo (subtitle: "You're alone out there") is a science fiction film from 2009 and the first feature film by Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter. Its world premiere took place on September 24, 2009 in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
action
The plot of the film begins in the year 2267. Because the earth has become uninhabitable after an eco-collapse, the remaining people live on overcrowded space stations in space. The young doctor Laura Portmann hopes for a better future on the distant planet Rhea, where her sister already lives, and wants to earn the money she needs for the trip through a so-called cargo flight. She hires on the dilapidated space freighter Kassandra, which delivers components to Station 42, where a transport network for the journey to Proxima Centauri is to be built. The crew spends the eight-year mission in an artificial deep sleep, with one person monitoring the ship every eight months. The group “Kuiper Enterprises” fears attacks by an underground movement called “Die Maschinenstürmer ”, led by Klaus Bruckner. This claims that parts of the world are still (or again) habitable and that this is deliberately kept secret by the government. After the latest attack by the machine attackers on space station 30, additional security personnel are therefore deployed on all flights. Flight safety attendant Samuel Decker is on board on the Kassandra .
During the course of her shift, Laura Portmann has the feeling that she is not alone and finally believes that she has seen a stranger. On her search for the unknown, she meets Decker near the cargo lock, who, as it turns out, is automatically woken up at regular intervals to check the ship. Laura insists on waking the captain because an emergency regulation requires it.
The three now set out together to examine the cargo hold filled with sealed containers. The captain discovers that the bulkhead to the cargo hold has been opened illegally several times during Portmann's shift, but explains it as a possible malfunction. Equipped with cold protection suits, they set out separately to search the huge, frozen cargo hold. The captain dies in a fall from a great height. Soon after, the lock to the hold begins to close, and Decker and Portmann are threatened with being trapped in the cold. However, you barely manage to escape.
After this incident, the rest of the crew is awakened. While investigating the captain's death, they discover capsules with people in the freight containers and take one of these capsules with a little girl to the medical station for examination. Portmann notes that people live in the capsules, but are in artificial deep sleep and have neural implants .
In light of the incidents, Laura becomes more and more suspicious. She regularly sends video messages to her sister. The transmission takes less and less time, and the replies arrive faster than expected. Laura asks the system administrator Yoshida to find out what the real destination of the cargo ship is. This only reports to her that the target coordinates do not match those of station 42 and that these are permanently programmed and cannot be changed before departure. Only the captain and the first officer knew about the coordinates, which leads the suspicion to the first officer - Lindbergh. This has Decker arrested and put into a deep sleep. However, he can first tell Portmann that the cargo ship is flying to Rhea.
Later on, Yoshida is found dead by Portmann, which looks like a murder. It is found that Decker has been awakened and the search for him begins. During this search, Portmann discovers a stowaway who attacks them but is shot dead during the scramble. Only the pistol can be seen and it is not clear who fired it. The stowaway was Klaus Bruckner.
Meanwhile, Decker was captured again and is to be put back into deep sleep on orders from Lindbergh. He is taken away by the two on-board mechanics. However, they hope for a place on Rhea and threaten him so that he reveals the secret to them. At the same time, Portmann learns from Lindbergh that Rhea is only a simulation , since the settlement of the real Rhea has failed, the ecosystem has collapsed and the planet has become uninhabitable. The simulation is only a temporary solution, however, until a new habitable planet is available. Until then, the people will be placed in sleeping bins and taken to Station 42, which is in orbit of the destroyed planet Rhea. Cassandra's job is therefore to transport Rhea residents. Lindbergh is then put back into deep sleep.
Decker turns out to be a member of the machine strikers. He plans to destroy the antenna phalanx on Station 42 to prevent communications between Earth and Rhea. Laura should first send a last message from Rhea with the information that Rhea was a lie and that parts of the earth are habitable again. Portmann had previously found video evidence of this from Bruckner. However, she still wants to save her sister from the simulation, which is why she and Decker are delaying the unloading of the cargo. The two on-board mechanics, on the other hand, plan to latch onto the simulation and spend the rest of their lives there, for which they reduce the programmed delay. Decker attaches the charges to the station's antennas and then searches for Portmann's sister; however, it is in such a bad condition that it cannot be easily retrieved from the simulation.
Portmann leaves the spaceship in a spacesuit in order to temporarily latch into Rhea at a console located outside station 42 and to convey the message as planned. Due to a malfunction of the control jets of her spacesuit, Portmann's fuel is running low, Decker gives her his fuel tank and sends her back to Kassandra. Its engine has already fired, and the shock wave catapults Decker and Portmann from the station into space. Portmann is able to save himself on the ship, while Decker moves further and further towards the planet Rhea.
Back on board, there is a fight between Portmann and Lindbergh, who was prematurely awakened because of contaminated cooling substance and therefore actively present again. Lindbergh is defeated and is pushed out of the ship through the airlock . As a result, only Portmann and the Rhea girl are preparing for the return flight to Earth.
production
Ivan Engler worked at Cargo for a total of nine years. He had a budget of just five million Swiss francs at his disposal, a modest amount in an international comparison of the genre , which is divided into two million in funds (own funds and grants) and sponsored material and services worth three million. The film took 40 days to shoot on the disused Sulzer site in Oberwinterthur. The few real outdoor shots were made during a two-week post - shoot in Geneva , Buch am Irchel and Basel . For the backdrops of the space stations and the space freighter, a total of 80 tons of material were used in the Oberwinterthur studios on three floors (with 3000 m²). Matthias Noger from St. Gallen was responsible for the production design ; he worked on the design of Cargo for around three years .
criticism
“It took director Ivan Engler nine years of work to make the first Swiss-made science fiction film. With a tight budget of five million Swiss francs, Cargo became a surprisingly solid and atmospherically dense film with a successful arc of suspense. It's just a shame that neither the story, which is handled too simply, nor the relatively pale leading actress can keep up with these positive aspects. Nevertheless, a visit to the cargo ship Kassandra is definitely worthwhile. "
“The universe of Engler's film is therefore actually an incomplete parasitic world, the content of which has to be supplemented by viewers not only with empirical values from our real world, but also with those from various cinematic universes. [...] In Cargo, the quotations serve both as an homage to the genre classics and as an important part of the reference structure. [...] SF-affine recipients should, due to the SF conventions and cinematic quotations used, not only be able to create associations on the level of the plot, but also on that of the artistic statement. The messages conveyed in Cargo are inserted into a larger discourse and thus gain in importance. "
Awards
- At the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2010, Cargo received the Audience Award for Best Sci-Fi Movie and Best Visual Effects .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for cargo . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2010 (PDF; test number: 121 198 V).
- ^ MovieMaze.de: Film review by Cargo
- ↑ Scott Brand: "Cargo - Out there you are alone. The first cinematic SF thriller from Switzerland and its role models. In: Pawel Walowski (ed.): The (new) man and his worlds. German-language fantastic literature and science- Fiction. Berlin: Franck & Timme, 2017. pp. 233-250, pp. 247f.
- ↑ torontoafterdark.com: Award Winners 2010 ( Memento from August 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive )