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We Can't Live Without Cosmos
Movie

We Can't Live Without Cosmos

2014 • Unknown

Woke Score
1.8
out of 10

Plot

Two cosmonauts, two friends, try to do their best in their everyday training life to make their common dream a reality. But this story is not only about the dream.

Overall Series Review

The animated short film 'We Can't Live Without Cosmos' is a somber and emotionally resonant story focusing on the singular, lifelong dream of two male friends to become cosmonauts. The narrative tracks their childhood aspirations through to their intense, shared training, emphasizing the profound depth of their bond over everything else. The plot is driven entirely by their mutual ambition and the subsequent emotional collapse of one character following the implied death of his friend on a solo mission. The film is a poetic, visual commentary on friendship, destiny, and the ultimate, transcendent sacrifice one will make for a soulmate. It operates within a retro Soviet-era aesthetic, celebrating the romanticism of the space race while also lightly acknowledging the bureaucratic and sometimes tragic reality of the system. The story's focus is universal, dealing with loss and devotion, and it remains untainted by modern socio-political lecturing.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics1/10

Characters 1203 and 1204 are defined solely by their shared ambition to be cosmonauts, which is a purely merit-based pursuit. The entire corps of trainees is depicted as male and visually uniform, avoiding any forced insertion of diversity or vilification based on immutable characteristics. The narrative adheres strictly to universal meritocracy.

Oikophobia2/10

The film adopts a 'Soviet retro' aesthetic and is described as a warmly forgiving homage to the glory and pathos of the era of brave exploration and the national dream of space. While there is a subtle critique of the bureaucratic system and the tragic reality of rockets crashing, the overall tone reclaims a sense of national history and does not frame the home culture as fundamentally corrupt or racist. Core civilizational aspirations are romanticized.

Feminism1/10

The main characters are men whose story is centered on a brotherhood-in-arms dynamic. Women are largely absent from the core plot, which focuses on the men's career and friendship. There are no 'Girl Boss' tropes, no emasculation of male characters who are portrayed as competent, and no messaging that frames motherhood or family as a 'prison.' The film is simply focused on a male bond.

LGBTQ+3/10

The deep, non-sexual emotional attachment between the two main male characters, which critics describe as an 'Ambiguously Gay' or 'romantic attachment,' serves as the driving force of the entire drama. This close, soulmate-like male-male pairing forms the normative structure of the film's relationship. However, the film avoids explicitly centering sexual identity or providing any political lecturing on gender theory; the focus is on a profound, platonic or subtextually romantic bond.

Anti-Theism2/10

The film’s ending transcends the physical world, showing one friend's spirit leaving his body to join the other in the cosmos, which is a highly spiritual concept focused on destiny and transcendent unity. There is no explicit hostility toward organized religion, specifically Christianity, and the ending suggests a higher meaning that supersedes objective reality, acknowledging a form of transcendent morality through personal connection.