Final Rating: 4/5
Viking is a new science fiction satire from Québecois writer and director Stéphane Lafleur. The film is about how the first manned mission to Mars is experiencing inter-team conflicts, which might derail the entire program. The Viking Society has been tasked with assembling a crew of people who most closely match the personalities of the real crew members to see if they can offer solutions to what they are experiencing one hundred million kilometers away.
David, played by Steve Laplante, is a high school gym teacher. He is a natural leader, leading lessons of how to work together and when he was a boy had dreams of being an astronaut. He applies for the Viking program and gets accepted as his demeanour is supposedly an exact match to John Sheppard, second in command of the real Mars mission. He is forced to leave his family and life behind for almost two and a half years, matching the remaining timeline of the space crew to accurately simulate every aspect of their lives. This means leaving behind a wife and children and being unable to tell his friends where he is going or what he will be doing. When he arrives at the Viking Society facility he meets “Dr. Janet Adam” the team’s commander, “Steven” who supposedly is “John’s” biggest nemesis on the crew, and “Liz” and “Gary” to round out the team. While on the mission everyone must use the names of their crew counterparts and not disclose their real names to help preserve the illusion and get the best data possible.
The crew is brought out into the middle of nowhere where a building is set up to mimic the environment and quarters of the spaceship. Each crew member has a small dorm-like bedroom, they gather in the kitchen to have communal meals, a garden area to grow their own vegetables and most importantly a board room to have daily meetings where they simulate problems and try to suggest ideas to the command center to help the astronauts. Every morning when the crew wake up, they get a punch card with a brief description of how their counterpoint is doing that day. Things like if they are well rested, excited, in a fight with another crew member, homesick and more. This gives the Viking members the ability to improvise with a directive.
“Liz”, played by Denis Houle, worries about things like the rationing of sugar cubes so they make a chart of equality, how much is a sugar cube worth of other desired luxuries. “John” finds tasks like this frivolous as it won’t address any real issues the crew has, especially when “Gary”, Hamza Haq, suggests they rat out crew members who take more than their fair share. Right from the let go “John” tries to position himself as a new leader, thinking both Janet and the woman playing “Janet”, Fabiola N. Aladin, are unqualified to be the leader of the group, especially with her mock therapist style of captaincy.
Despite supposedly being rivals in space, “John” and “Steven”, Larissa Corriveau, become close on the ground. “Steven” is played by a woman who’s real name is Marie-Josée. She’s young and attractive and thinks that David is the only sane person on the crew, until he starts going to extreme lengths to duplicate real life, which eventually leads to the two of them fighting for real and fulfilling the prophecy that they don’t get along. The more into the experiment “John” gets the more he starts to alienate himself from the rest of his crewmates.
The film has a dry and quirk comedic touch, one that is synonymous with Québec humour. It is a situational workplace comedy with normal interpersonal squabbles found on shows like The Office or Parks and Rec. Add in the mock space mission and things get absurd. When “John” and “Steven” get their rover stuck while on a reconnaissance trip (an ATV), two men on horseback pass them and ask if they need assistance. You get some gender bending going on as well with “Steven” being played by a woman and “Liz” getting an older man to play her. At one point in the mission Liz is revealed to be pregnant and the crew must discuss how to recreate it in real life with “Liz” deciding to tape a bag of cereal to his stomach to mimic the baby bump.
The film takes itself seriously in mimicking space exploration films too. There is a scene where “John” and “Steven” are about to leave the ship to explore Mars and David warns Marie-Josée that she isn’t taking the job seriously enough and the Viking Society commanders might replace her with another actor. This scene is filmed in a “decompression” module, “John” turns off his comms and has this private moment akin to how Dave and Frank hid a conversation from HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Kubrick connection doesn’t stop there as the crew is outfitted with red retro looking space suits, ones that wouldn’t be out of place on the 2001 set. We also get shots of the crew traveling by shuttle (school bus) to their space station in a way that is reminiscent of The Right Stuff or Apollo 11.
The film is genuinely funny and creative with some great surprise twists that you don’t see coming. The deadpan delivery of the entire cast keeps the illusion alive that they really are on a mission, until a ridiculous thing like a pizza gets delivered to the module. The film is one that any fan of dry comedy and space exploration films will get a kick out of.
Viking was seen during the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival. Thank you to Les Films Opale for the screener.
