What would be the most sensible move for Mamoru Oshii, renowned anime director famous for the excellent "Ghost In The Shell", as he moves into conventional cinema? Well obviously a sci-fi movie. That would make sense. With a female lead character of course, don't want to differ too much from the old formula where we don't have to. Stick to what you're good at, you know? And of course the film shuld be in Polish, with Polish actors and actresses..... wait a moment! Ok so making the film in Polish seems like an odd move and certainly not a good career move.
However, the film has the same philosophical undertones of Oshii's anime movie Ghost In The Shell, although the action is replaced with intelligent effects. By "intelligent" I mean effects that are made to add to the film rather than James Bond type effects which are simply intended to detract from the cheap script.
The movie introduces us head on to the inside of the fully immersive video-game Avalon, with the heroine, Ash, doing her thing as an experienced player. The game involves tanks and helicopters and various other players with guns, so this is a much more realistic game than the fish gutting that took place in Cronenberg's "eXistenZ". When we see the real world it turns out to be a dismal place with people who barely look alive and Ash, unsurprisingly spends as much time as she can in the game to avoid this "real" world. She then finds out that there is a higher class than the A class she has acheived. A "special A" class.....
Most reviewers I have read who disliked this movie have been impatient and looked at the film superficially. They see the atmospheric moments of the movie as 'time fillers'. If only someone'd put that criticism to Ridley Scott who does that far too much in his hollow movies "Blade Runner" and "Hannibal". The reviewers also seemed to be confused by why Ash does not have any trouble from authorities in the real world where this dangerous immersive game is meant to be illegal.
Though they are right to criticise the empty moments in films like this I think they would have noticed them much less if they had spent the time thinking about the meanings of the movie rather than thinking of irrelevant criticisms of the plot. They seem to miss the point of the ending entirely. I shall not give away the twist here, but I think it is fair to reveal that this movie has Buddhist ideas behind it. The game is like a search for the Holy Grail, or perhaps Enlightenment. Of course the dismal, unrewarding, 'real' world is irrelevant to such a quest.
Avalon is a film with many hidden depths and is not to be approached with the expectations of simply some kind of action film rollercoaster. It requires a certain amount of thought from the audience, and unlike with 'the Matrix', thinking about the possible underlying meanings is not simply optional since no one within the film is going to give you the answers. |
