Voyage to the End of the Universe (Ikarie XB-1)

Dir. Jindřich Polák. 1963, 88 mins. Imported 35mm print from the Czech Film Archive. With Zdeněk Štěpánek, František Smolík, Dana Medřická. In Czech with English subtitles. Ikarie XB-1 is an ambitious science fiction space opera, possibly best known for prefiguring many visual and thematic motifs of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. This “Space Marienbad,” as one critic called it, perfectly epitomises an era defined by a raging space race and cultural competition between the East and the West. The film portrays an idealised communist civilisation circa 2163, as it embarks on a voyage beyond our solar system. Its real protagonist is a monumental discovery spaceship Ikarie, a self-contained world in miniature designed to impress an international audience with its vision of a highly advanced lifestyle, as imagined by a small socialist country. Like the rest of the film, its 22nd-century costumes are steeped in the ideology of utopianism, something that is especially driven home when “ancient people” of the twentieth century are discovered on a derelict ship deep in space.