Signifying Nature’s Core Motif
During his early career as a screenwriter and novelist, Alex Garland collaborated with film directors such as Danny Boyle, Pete Travis, and Mark Romanek. On representative original scenarios from his book The Beach, Garland worked specifically with Boyle on the reinvention of the first zombies of the 21st century. Followed by a sunshine space odyssey, he ultimately fits perfectly in adapting Jeff VanderMeer’s book Annihilation.
After earning an Academy Award nomination in 2014 for his debut Ex Machina, Garland deserved his screenplay, while his film won the Oscar for best visual effects. He proved his knack for alternating between comic book world works and seriously substantive genres. His ability to weave accessible, emotional narratives with the ideas he explores in genre practitioners places him in the same arena as Philip K. Dick.
In essence, the writer incorporates sturdy human exchange into complex sci-fi scenarios in every attempt. In the film, the process of cells dividing and replicating involves one cell dividing into two. It negates its original form by serving two different cells. By signifying nature’s self-destructive urge to create, healing and growth depend on such acts of violence. The prevailing theme throughout the film is the microscopic view of cell division recurring as the film’s core motif.
The Majesty of Garland’s Narrative Choices
Garland’s narrative and visual choices integrate lovingly. Such chilling beauty of Kantian majesty dominates this stunning yet aesthetically intelligent production. It leaves us with much to ponder about human biases toward the essence of creation. After all, such a concept Garland created but never forgot to reflect on human drama. Indeed, the bacteria’s rapid growth in the human body has been described disease.
It served as a period of prosperity in the microcosm of the bacterial world. In such a context, science fiction’s thoughtful but profound experience of physical self-destruction becomes something new. The story focuses on Lena, an academic who married Kane and teaches cellular biology at Johns Hopkins. Before his experience in Shimmer, he discovered Kane during his seven years in the army.
In an endearing flashback of affection and humor, they share a delightful romance. Apart from Kane’s series of secret missions to secret locations, each one is for a time; they have never specified. As well as causing Lena’s infidelities, Kane disappears on a mission to the Shimmer. Even though it happened a year ago, she has tried to move beyond her grief and guilt. Indeed, she pushed him into accepting assignments; he knew he would not return to them.
Without Warning
At the time, Kane returned home without warning. With a silent shell that answered all questions with the same blank answer, he could only reply that he didn’t know. As Lena was about to do, suddenly, his organs started failing, and he was coughing up blood. Inside a facility called Area X, Lena meets a psychologist named Dr. Ventress, who describes that Shimmer, and its threats are constantly growing.
Soldiers, animals, and even drones had gone inside. However, none came back except Kane himself. Regardless of being a dimensional rift event, extraterrestrial visits, or even religion, Garland selects aspects of each entry to synthesize the author’s complex. In Annihilation, such an abstract conclusion on screen has to borrow a term from the film itself. Therefore, Garland biased the novel rather than providing a faithful adaptation.
He prefers to bend material from one medium to another to suit the cinema’s requirements. As usual book-to-film adaptations do, it opens the narrative with a shot of a meteorite, an apocalyptic horror delivery system at its most efficient. The meteor fell to Earth, crashing into a lighthouse on the southeastern coast of the United States. Animals and plants mutate and spread from a central location.
Spectrum of Shimmer
A living wall, or Shimmer, surrounds them. Then, the framing device gives the film structure. In such an early scene, the government quarantines Lena in a government facility. An official in a hazmat suit asked him where his two-week mission was supposed to be. She answers each question so far that she doesn’t know; additionally, she remembers what happened to her fellow scientist.
Rob Hardy, the cinematographer, incorporated the Annihilation theme into their visual motif. While without making the integration visible, its form, subtext, and story maintain a delicate balance. In the film, Josie realizes that Shimmer refracts not only light and radio waves. However, it is also in the DNA that the visual has a much deeper meaning. Like Kane and Lena’s relationship as two torn apart but united cells, Garland captures his theme in evocative yet straightforward shots.
Like the initial touch of Kane and Lena’s hands behind a glass of water, Mark Digby, the designer, oversees and realizes a spectrum of colors from elsewhere. Lena’s team walks through the rainbow mist that is all over the place in Shimmer. On the other hand, Hardy uses a lens flare that shoots purple and pink all over the screen.
VanderMeer’s Material of Fiction
Many of these ideas permeate VanderMeer’s lore. However, Garland concentrated on an alternative way. It maintains the original meaning of the novel while creating a new thing. On the other hand, he also turns material into original and extraordinary filmmaking in every moment of visceral horror. Its jaw-dropping majesty and haunting performances, especially Natalie Portman.
While we can also interpret Annihilation in many ways, ultimately, the sense of completion and finality stop audiences from returning to Garland’s films in the future, especially Men. Yet, it leaves our place in a world that has always been impossibly global. It considers the cultural realm and the non-human realm to be a form of anthropocentrism in itself. If it eliminates the theme, then the film offers us a vehicle through it.
We can also consider specifically inhuman cultural traits. Because the material’s relation to the world is fiction, Garland then shows us that fictional narratives enable us to understand the cruel in a non-anthropocentric way.
Bibliography
- Garland, A. (2018). Annihilation. Faber & Faber.
- Garland, A., McClelland, J., Skokowski, P., Levy, S., Zacks, J., Vernallis, C., … & Leal, J. (2021). Director Alex Garland Converses with Cybermedia’s Scientists and Media Scholars. Cybermedia: Explorations in Science, Sound, and Vision, 31.
- McClanahan, B. (2019). Alex Garland (dir.)(2018) Annihilation: A film review.
