U Are The Universe is Ukrainian writer and director Pavlo Ostrikov‘s gem of an amazing first feature.
A World Away
by Alexa DalbyU Are The Universe
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
If ever anyone had a face like a blue-collar Everyman, it’s comedian Volodymyr Kravchuk, who holds the film together, just him alone on screen, as Andriy, an intergalactic space trucker. He’s alone on a dilapidated spaceship, on a four-year voyage transporting earth’s nuclear waste to Jupiter’s moon Callisto. He has only an old-fashioned robot who tells bad jokes, Maxim (Leonid Popadko) for company.
While he’s away, he loses his job and earth blows up. Yes, really. He has nowhere to go back to now and his spaceship is running out of everything so he knows he has only as long as everything lasts. At first, he enjoys it (with amusing nods to Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey) and by playing old vinyl records: but then out of the blue he gets an audio message from Catherine, a French scientist (voiced by Alexia Depicker and played by Daria Plahtiy) alone on a space station which will soon fall into Saturn, millions of miles away. Although they are such different people, they get to know each other through talking by radio and Andriy becomes determined to reach her.
U Are The Universe is a gem of a first film about the human need for company and someone who understands, even if you are the last two people left alive in the universe. The film was made in Kyiv after the Russian invasion of Ukraine – with a delay while Kravchuk was called up – and it is tempting to see Andriy’s isolation as a mirror for that of his country standing alone.
It’s a solo film like Moon, with minimal CGI, beautifully constructed sets of the interior of the spaceship and clean, bright camerawork. It’s intriguing and very moving in an unusual way. What would you do if you were the last person left alive?
U Are The Universe premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2024. International representation is by The PR Factory.
