January 23, 2004
Avalon
I watched a very unusual film last night. It is the work of Mamoru Oshii, the Japanese director who along with writer Kazunori Itô brought us both Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell, 1995) and Kidô keisatsu patorebâ (the Patlabor series, 1988).
Some would say that this film is a serious departure for him, others that is a realization of a long-held dream. Avalon (2001) is not Oshii's typical anime effort but for all that it still offers entrancing special effects. It is the closest thing I have seen other than the Matrix series at rendering anime in a real-world setting.
The film is set in the "near future" and it is a very bleak, dystopian vision (aren't they all?). The protagonists are players in the game of Avalon, an illegal virtual reality battle simulation. Unusually, the film has been digitally filtered to wash most of the color out of it so that it is presented to us in a sepia color that matches the dramatic tone of the film.
Our heroine, Ash, is an ace player of the game and former member of the never-defeated Wizard team. The team is now disbanded (after their first defeat) and she is a lone warrior competing for enough points to feed herself and her Basset hound (Oshii owns one and apparently has taken to including them in his films).
The special effects are quite stunning, easily on a par with some of the best that the Matrix has to offer. Of course, the original Matrix pre-dated Avalon by a couple of years but these effects are original and well thought out and add a great deal to both the feel of the film and to the storyline. Special features to the DVD include a very lengthy exposition (on the length of an hour or more) on the special effects design by members of the teams that worked on them.
One thing that struck me as particularly interesting was that the film was filmed in Poland, with a crew of Polish actors and Japanese special effects technicians. The world of film has truly become international.
To my mind this film stands up as one of the better examples of foreign science fiction done in recent years and I heartily recommend that those who liked Canadian director David Cronenberg's ExistenZ (1999) and The Matrix give it a chance.
Posted by artandscience at January 23, 2004 11:22 AM