Annihilation
One of the first stories I ever attempted to write (amongst many — I am largely an attemptive writer) was entitled ‘The Apathy Knife’. The idea at its core was that there was a knife which sapped all feeling from you, until you were left with nothing, no feeling, no will, no desire…just a grey mush of baleful existing. I took this idea in a horror-based, murdery direction, because, when consumed with apathy the only thing really to do is things you should find shocking, but don’t, because you no longer care about anything. The reason the story never worked is that this felt dumb. See when I was writing it, my own apathy never extended beyond eschewing all personal hygiene and responsibility, whether that was towards my academic work, my professional development or even feeding myself. What felt dumb was stating that apathy enables people to destroy others. It doesn’t. When you become a spectator on your own amazing carelessness, it is only your own destruction you’re witnessing.
I start with this, as a means of explaining why, in the aftermath of the film Annihilation, I discovered that it was the response of Tessa Thompson’s quiet, passive Josie Radek to destruction that felt like my entry point into the film, because her response to the onrush of her destruction is the one I have also felt. As she says:
‘Ventress wants to face it. You [referring to the main character, Natalie Portman’s Lena] want to fight it. But I don’t think I want either of those things.’
What she wants is to succumb. Her life is a void — so much so that she self-harms because pain is all that is left for her to feel. For her, annihilation is an opportunity unavailable to most suicides — a chance to fade away quietly, into the green. To gently cease to be. As someone for whom the only barrier to suicide has frequently been the intentionality of it, the fact that you have to actually do something to die, I understand that desire. To be frank, part of me deeply envies her her fictional opportunity.
This empathy with Radek’s annihilation however is more than just a feeling — it is a bridge between me and the film, because, in delineating the contours of her annihilation, and contrasting those with the films’ other annihilations, I see that it is but one amongst many. Everyone in the group of five women who leave the Southern Reach and venture into the alien-altered swamplands known only as Area X, or ‘The Shimmer’ (a name I like less well — it’s a more elegant term than ‘Area X’ but communicates less mystery, and I truly loathe meaningless elegance) is annihilated, but in a different way, each of which speaks to their own personal reasons for feeling annihilated in the first place.
As related in Angelica Jade Bastien’s wonderful reading of Annihilation, through the lens of her own experiences with depression — http://www.vulture.com/2018/03/annihilation-movie-depression.html:
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‘At one point, Lena and Cass have an intimate conversation about what led this group of women into the Shimmer. “We’re all damaged goods here,” Cass says with tranquil ease, incongruous to the situation. She and Lena trade stories about their emotional scars tersely, without much detail — Lena’s husband, Cass’s daughter, who died of leukemia. Cass goes on to discuss the emotional wounds of the other women: Anya’s carnal energy and overwhelming charisma mask her struggle with alcoholism. Josie always wears long sleeves to hide the scars on her arm, a physical reminder of her suicidal impulses. Ventress’s chilly determination is a byproduct of her looming, inevitable death due to cancer. Garland is never as blunt anywhere else in the film as he is here.’
Cass (Tuva Novotny) and Anya (Gina Rodruiguez) are annihilated violently, destroyed by a bear horrifically mutated by the alien, which speaks with Cass’ screams. In contrast with Radek, Cass remains, horribly, as her final shrieking moments. There is something there about the legacy of deaths from pain, how sometimes all that lingers of the death is the memory of their pain, related in a way that captures, through a scene of breath-binding tension, the feeling of being trapped with those memories. That scene indeed is indicative of the genius of Annihilation. It combines the mortal fear of being trapped in a room with a predator, with the psychological horror of being trapped in a room listening to the pain of someone you care for, with the alien revulsion at the travesty that is something that should be dead but is alive, that is animal forcibly melded with human. Horror is layered upon horror, and through it, a voice speaks.
Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is different again. Her annihilation is neither violent, nor a succumbing, but a transcending. She becomes something, I at least would assume given its power, higher. When I think of her death, I also remember the catchphrase of The Fountain (2006), ‘death is the road to awe’. That is a movie about seeing the glory in the occurrence of death, when said death is inevitable, and I think Ventress’ annihilation is similar. She is a dead woman walking, consumed by an incurable illness. Under such circumstances, death cannot be said to be a tragedy, particularly given, as we are told, that Ventress is utterly alone in the world. This comparison, between Annihilation and The Fountain helps to distinguish what (writer/director) Alex Garland is doing. He is, I think, attempting an exhaustive portrayal of his subject, where other films (hell, one could even say all of Aronofsky’s filmography) address specific aspects.
Which brings us cycling round to Lena, and Kane (Oscar Isaac).
Kane, who, no longer understanding who he is, decides to immolate, and so pass on the responsibility for being someone to his alien doppelganger. Lena, who seemingly chooses to destroy her doppelganger, and seemingly succeeds, only to be changed at the end anyway.
I think the analysis of this annihilation is done best by FilmCritHulk — https://filmcrithulk.blog/2018/02/27/annihilation-the-horrors-of-change/ — in that this annihilation is about the everyday annihilation of change from self to self. Lena and Kane lost who they used to be. We don’t know how or why, and we only become aware of this through the breakdown of their relationship, but even without details it is clear. This loss takes them both into Area X. There, their selves are annihilated…and their other selves go out into the world. Because, as Hulk so perfectly relates:
‘It is easy to view the the word annihilation through the classic definition of “complete destruction or obliteration,” but there’s actually a more pointed definition in physics, which is: “the conversion of matter into energy, especially the mutual conversion of a particle and an antiparticle into electromagnetic radiation.”’
Annihilation is conversion. And yet not just conversion, because, the final act of these two annihilated people, who were in beautiful, sunlit love, who were then broken by senseless betrayal, is to embrace. They do so gingerly, uncertain still, but why not. They are fresh new beings. The annihilation of their selves was traumatic, but in that ending, I see the indication that what had broken those selves was also consumed in the light of two phosphorous grenades. Annihilation in Annihilation means many things. It is horror, and peace, and transcendence, and also, in a shot of two people, not knowing who they are but knowing what they want, it is perhaps a chance at redemption.
