Alex Garland’s script brings to the surface the theme of human flailing that was present but less articulated in Jeff VanderMeer’s book. The other three women on the expedition are broken in their own ways - they’ve lost loved ones or struggle with self-harm.
#Aniquilation movie
Related Storiesĩ Ways Annihilation the Movie Differs from Annihilation the Book Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh,) a psychologist who has been overseeing all previous expeditions from the Southern Reach base camp (none of which, with the exception of Lena’s husband, have ever returned) while, it is later revealed, slowly dying of cancer. Portman’s Lena is a biologist who has volunteered for the expedition after her husband (Oscar Isaac) has come back inexplicably altered from the same mission. The face-off occurs at the end of the film’s trek into the Shimmer, a mysterious, probably paranormal zone that is spreading through the Florida swampland in which all manner of biological impossibilities are taking place. I was impressed, then, to see that Smith herself had choreographed that scene - and that perhaps the emotional wallop it delivered wasn’t just my own projection. Watching Natalie Portman stuck in a seemingly inescapable dance with her faceless, iridescent double - watching it turn violent, not out of malice, but because it can’t help but be - called to mind Smith’s controlled throwing of herself across a performance space, the internal passion and turmoil of the self made physical. The film introduced me to Bobbi Jene Smith, and her ability to turn her entire body into a lightning rod of instinct through her charged, emotionally (and sometimes physically) naked choreography, as sensual as it is self-destructive.
I’m no modern dance buff, and the dancer and choreographer is not someone who would have been on the tip of my tongue if it wasn’t for last year’s ravishing documentary Bobbi Jene, by director Elvira Lind. In the feverish crescendo of Annihilation’s wordless climax, the name Bobbi Jene crept into my otherwise paralyzed brain.
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