User Reviews

Imagine an animation whose driving metaphor is the sky, bustling with clouds and fighter planes. I would bet you are already thinking of adjectives like "action" and "fast-paced" to describe such a film. Well, think again.

In fact, Mamoru Oshii's latest feature film is surprisingly low-key. Fans of his previous work will not be disappointed, but even those familiar with his typical moody antics and his meandering, self-reflective style (from movies like Ghost in the Shell or Avalon) may find the pace of this film hard-going. Characters are distant and understated. Places are remote and static. Action is fleeting and almost random. Dialogue is sparse and vague. All of this makes for a challenging experience.

How, though, does it pay off? How does the film pull it off? Well, it is difficult to explain this without either giving too much away or saying far too little, but the main point is perfectly understandable without any spoilers: The salvaging fact of the movie is its logical progression towards perfect explication of its premises, towards perfect self-explanation. This film pays off wonderfully towards the end. The way it does it is being faithful to its own pace and rhythm. Yes: characters may be understated - but for a reason. Yes: places are remote - but for a reason. And on and on, so it goes... There will be a moment when everything just clicks into place. The serenity and straight-forwardness of the film is also its greatest strength. It is like a long algebraic expression that crunches away slowly in the background but ultimately overwhelms the viewer in a "Heureka!" moment. For a film that starts opaque, everything becomes transparent by the end. It doesn't rely on tricks or cheating the audience. It is a perfectly honest, and also perfectly brutally realist film. It makes explicit references to Camus, and this makes sense, in the context of the classically existentialist questions the movie raises. For its theme and mood, it feels very European and American (it even features quite a bit of English dialogue) and there's no Japanese "cutesy-ness" in the film. It is a very serious and mature movie, in a way that combines the best of both European literature and Japanese culture.

Despite its universal and abstract nature, and despite its stylized "alternative American" backdrop, the best reference point for the style of the film is the cinema of the masters of Japanese understatement, Yasujirô Ozu and Akira Kurosawa. Indeed, the movie's subtle aesthetic eye belongs to the tradition of the Japanese outlook on life crystallized in the concept of "mono no aware" (translatable as "transience of things"). If the movie is existentialist, it is so in a way that only a Japanese film can be. The movie, then, is very Japanese and very universal. It combines realism with symbolic and science-fiction elements in a way that is reminiscent of the equally slow-paced "spiritual materialism" of the master director Andrei Tarkovsky.

So, Sky Crawlers succeeds because it starts out with banally normal situations and people but, by the end, increasingly problematizes its own deceptive normalcy and shows the underlying tensions bubbling under the calm surface. In other words, the film is both straightforward and complex, both obvious and difficult, both down-to-earth and transcendent. This contrast between "ground" and "air" is, in a very obvious way, incorporated into the plot - it is, after all, a movie about pilots and airplanes, both on the ground and in the air. This is obvious, right? Well, yes, it is obvious, but it's also very difficult to comprehend and appreciate. This film doesn't show heroes or heroic deeds, it shows people in difficult situations. This movie is not about pilots and planes, but about what those pilots and planes represent. The symbolism of the film is very subtle, but it is this very subtlety that makes it so strong and compelling when it finally hits you! Slowly (as is intended) you get to see the greatness of this film, and the gravity of its themes. Like in Tolstoy's "War and Peace", the true genius is not in the description of banal dinner parties or whatever, but in the way all of this "normal" interaction is shown to be a facade through a careful elaboration of the underlying themes. A huge kudos to the script, which is an exercise in humanity and subtlety.

This marvelous ability of the film to be read on many levels at once - literal and allegorical - is what makes it such a pleasure to watch, at least for the most part. The pacing may be difficult, yes, but the pay-off is immense. It reminds me a little of David Lynch's "The Straight Story" where the simplicity of the plot is what makes it so good. The bottom line, you don't need to think about Camus, Ozu or Ghost in the Shell to appreciate this film. Even if it's not exactly easy entertainment, it works on the surface level of science fiction anime. I mean, it's simple (some would say banal), it's low-key (boring), it's marvelously atmospheric (slooow). All those qualifications can be read as good or bad signs, but if you're willing to invest a bit of time and effort into digesting the theme and message of the movie, you will be glad you did so, because Mamoru Oshii has given us another masterwork of adult animation.

The near future. Humanity has achieved some semblance of peace. To remind the masses of pain and suffering, and to inject wonder, gratitude and emotion into a world that has long calloused into apathy, multinational corporations stage elaborate wars fought by cloned fighter pilots called "Kildren". The corporations are named after German football teams. The Kildren do not age and remain in a state of perpetual adolescence.

"The Sky Crawlers" was directed by Mamourou Oshii, who cites Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky as influences. His film begins with Yuichi Kannami, one of many fighter pilot Kildren, arriving at a military installation. Everyone at the installation knows that Yuichi is simply a clone who's been assigned to them and died countless times before, but they nevertheless treat him as a "real" human being. It is a charade they're tired of maintaining.

"Why bother to grow up if I'm going to die?" Yuichi says early in the film, the line encapsulating his indifference to all things. Unfazed by the possibility that he may be bioengineered, a machine created for virtually no purpose, Yuichi spends his days drinking beer, playing war games, having sex and lazing about. He never questions who he is, why he's on the island or why he fights. He has no memory of what came before "now" and little regard for what will come next.

Towards the end of the film Yuichi begins to develop some modicum of self-awareness. Seeking a kind of Sartrean authenticity, and desperate to end the charade he is caught up in, he takes to the skies. He is then mercilessly shot down by a fighter pilot called "the teacher". The following day (wait until the end of the credits) another clone of Yuichi appears at the military base. It then becomes apparent that each clone is destroyed or commits suicide prior to attaining self-awareness. For the Kildren, ignorance is bliss.

The film is philosophically heavy, Oshii swimming in waters routinely visited by Antonioni. Today in Japan an estimate one million youths, or roughly one percent of the population, are classified as "hikikomori", which literally means "being confined". These are youths who have sequestered themselves in family homes and have little contact with the outside world. Having given up on the idea of being a contributing member of society these youths either remain unemployed or work in menial jobs, embracing stagnation and self medicating themselves with various post-industrial creature comforts. In addition to this, the number of students dropping out of school in Japan has doubled since 1990, and women are increasingly going on "womb strikes", refusing to have children. With this comes a shrinking work force and a fall in birth rates. An entire chunk of Japan no longer wishes to live.

While many believe the "hikikomori" to be social misfits or psychologically damaged, it is better to think of them as an early warning signal. Like coal mining canaries, which were once used to detect toxic gasses, the "hikikomori" are a red flag, sensitive individuals who sense that something is wrong and so retreat to the wombs of their bedrooms to escape from a society they view as being toxic.

Much literature has been written about the "hikikomori", but their existence essentially boils down to one thing: Japan is the world's first true post-modern nation. What you have in Japan is a conflict between East and West, between group and individual, between modernity and post-modernity. It is a country caught within a web of diametrically opposed forces, forces which are pressure cooked because of several relatively unique factors.

So on one hand you have a country cocooned by walls of water. A country with a fixed national identity, heavy immigration restrictions, a rigid school curriculum, a homogeneous ideology, a society built on strong social mores, honour, tradition, hard work, loyalty, group-ism, specific aesthetics, a hierarchical structure emphasising the inequality between persons etc etc. And on the other hand you have a country which no longer believes in the myth of Progress. Which suffers the atomization of the family, the rampant feminization of men, which now heavily borrows and models itself after Western culture, and which, in the wake of the economic boom of the 1980s, finds the pursuit of material extravagance to deliver emptiness rather than inner contentment.

Of course existential questions of meaningfulness and identity traditionally crop up in wealthy societies, as man's focus shifts from self-preservation to introspection. But Japan goes beyond this. Postmodernity is epitomised by relational identities, a loss of absolutes and widespread fragmentation. It abolishes the idea of fixed essences and leaves individuals to construct identities by appropriating from vapid, but always shifting, cultural and ethnic positions. End result: today the essence of the Japanese is "to have no essence", a stance which the "hikikomori" feebly rebel against.

So at its core "The Sky Crawlers" is about a society of youths caught in limbo, refusing to grow up because they have nothing to live for. Stuck in stasis they become increasingly infantilized, soothing their pain with vices like anime, which in this film takes the form of "staged" or "theatrical" wars "fought by actors". Oshii, in other words, attacks the anime industry itself, an industry in which the same old thing is repeated ad infinitum, all with the same interchangeable boy pilot avatars. Resentful of a dead creative environment (see "Children Of Men", in which the future is literally sterilized) he urges his hero, and audience, to escape and strive towards something. Interestingly, this pursuit is seen to be suicidal. Dedicating the body to a cause is itself the decision to erode the body for that cause.

Many complain that the film is too slow (even its dog fights are made banal), but those familiar with Antonioni will be at home here. The film isn't slow so much as it is beautifully nauseous. It's Antonioni's "Red Desert" with fighter jets.

8.9/10 - Flawed masterpiece. See "The Tin Drum".

I just saw this movie with a Toronto International Film Festival crowd, not one of whom applauded at the end. Film Festival crowds are usually quite generous and rarely does a filled theatre quietly walk out at the end.

It is not that this is a bad movie. I saw nobody walk out during it. In fact, at moments it's quite brilliant. It is just so slow and mind-numbingly morose that you simply have no energy to applaud at the end of the long two hours. Any movie, live or animated, where the characters are trapped in the throes of ennui had better be tremendously exciting because watching characters, who spent most of their time standing or sitting around doing nothing, is pretty darn boring. There are aerial battle scenes which were quite well executed and fun to watch, but even then, since we didn't know until the revelation towards the end why they were fighting, it had no context and became repetitive.

I understand there a book and video game associated with this movie, and those familiar with those may enjoy this, but others should be wary.

I'm giving it a 5, because it is an honest effort.

Mamoru Oshii's newest film utterly confounded most of the people around me at tonight's New York Screening. There was lots of "What the hell was that"s and "I liked it up to the end's" (which was really not the end because Oshii appeared in a recorded message welcoming us to the New York premiere, saying a few words about the film and admonishing us to stay to the end, which he didn't specify as after the end credits where a five minute sequence takes place-so half the audience was gone by the time it ran-and yes it alters things. The main message Oshii gave us was that the film is about children who are pilots who don't grow up.

This is the story of a world thats like our own but different. Its a place where corporations seem to control everything and everyone is engaged in a war that is actually more like a national game. Fighting the war are the eternally young kildren, young adults who never age and who can die it seems if they do so in combat. Into this mix, or rather to an outpost of four planes, comes a new pilot, a nice young man who seems to feel he remembers being here before. Of course he's wrong but everything is a blur.

I don't know how much more to tell you. the story that spins out from one of the most incredible sky battle action sequences put on film, is something that really needs to be seen on its own terms to be truly appreciated. What I can say is that the flying sequences, rendered in hyper realistic animation, is amazing. They are the reason to see the film on a movie screen, preferably a BIG movie screen if you get the chance. Its truly amazing. They are utterly beautiful...and terrifying.

I have to make it clear the sky sequences are not what the film is about. the film is about the pilots and their commander who face the day to day existence of getting by and fighting a war. The film deals with the daily grind of the people involved and you get to feel what their lives are like. At the same time the film is very deliberately paced. the film is what could be best described as slow. I didn't mind but some people around me did, wanting to know why there wasn't more action. Actually the action is almost an after thought or away of punctuating themes and ideas Oshii has running around in his head. This is not a film of physical motion but of intellectual.

What the people around me didn't seem to grasp was that this is a film by Mamoru Oshii, who may have made Ghost in the Shell, but he's also made some other really wild and trippy films about the nature of reality, memory, what it is to be human and other ideas. As an intellectual work the film is firing on all cylinders. Oshii has made a film that is about all of that and more, including the nature of war and the world. The action is secondary to the human story since the human story is where all of the meat is. The story of the new guy slowly morphs moving in to several other directions, including a mystery of sorts, the solution of which may appear to be obvious, but it raises other more intriguing themes like who are we really (I don't dare mention some of the others since to fully explore them will reveal major pot points).

In my humble opinion this is a great film. The friend and I who went with me to see the film, began talking as soon as the film really ended and we didn't stop talking about it until I left him on the train almost three hours later. Yes there were other subjects discussed during that three hours but we kept coming back to the film (he liked it but didn't love it, however he agreed that there is something to the film because it forces you to be engaged in a dialog about it. Not only does Oshii discuss big ideas but there are so many plot points and world points that are thrown out there that are never resolved that you can just keep pondering what happens at times. If you like films that you think about and argue about and which go their own way, you will love this movie.

Let me be honest I doubt most people are going to like this film. I don't know if most people are going to "get" this film. I think most people are going to wonder why there is not more action and why its "so slow". I know the people around me were wondering if that was it, as if the lack of a clear resolution (especially when they didn't stay through the credits) some how made the film something less then it was. I liked the lack of complete closure since it allowed my mind to wonder (besides you can see how the story may continue)

If you can take the film on its own terms and take it for the film of ideas it is, I think you'll like the film, possibly even love it. Don't fight it. And do stay through the end credits since whats there is important (think of the credits as a natural break, which frankly it is, it is one of the few films I've ever seen where the final sequence needs to be there, it needs the break of several minutes to function as it does). One of the better (best?) films of the year.

Oh boy, this was boring.

Child pilots fighting meaningless battles. If they wouldn't slaughter themselves for the amusement of the population (who don't seem either amused or interested) they are supposed to be immortal - or at least unaging.

The "actors" stalk around like emotionless zombies, which in all fairness was probably by design. Too bad that this causes viewers to develop zero bonds to any protagonist.

Nothing is happening. Ever.

Don't waste your time viewing this movie. I can sum it up perfectly: The philosophical background is the theory that humans don't appreciate peace unless someone is fighting a war somewhere. Thus corporations stage mock battles with real planes and real deaths to satisfy the unconscious demands of humans in a peaceful world. And since humans prefer other people dying to getting killed themselves, they clone child pilots to fight their battles for them, recycling them over and over. This movie shows a small part of the event-less lives of these ambition-less children.

The End.

Sounds interesting? Well, IT'S NOT! But hey, knock yourself out. Slightly more stimulating than counting sheep.

Just watched the movie using Crackle on my Xbox 360.

To be honest, I thought this movie would involve a lot of blood and fighting. But actually not at all, the majority of it involved conversations between characters. The fight scenes that did happen were entertaining, however, especially the opening one. I'll also admit that I initially thought that "The Teacher" was the main character. That part was confusing for me.

I couldn't really see a clear storyline. The plot summary on Crackle was short and not informative, so I had a hard time gathering information and putting it together.

Characters were uninteresting at best. Everyone seemed 'cryptic' in nature. By that, I mean they seemed to lack a personality. I never like that sort of thing. I enjoy seeing characters that express their personality, and when there's none to express, it gets boring really fast.

This is one of the most beautifully-animated movies I've ever seen. Realistic explosions and movements, especially the props on the aircraft, were pleasing to the eye. No bright or vibrant colors were used, but somehow I found that appealing.

If I were to improve this movie, I'd add more fight scenes (the battle between Kannami and The Teacher, especially) and take out a lot of the conversations. One key scene that I thought about for a while was the bombing attack - I seriously disliked that they didn't show the bombing, the interceptors, or how they "botched" the job.

Oshii Mamoru's films really seem to divide people. Those who've loved his films so far will find lots to enjoy here. And those who don't will probably complain about poor animation and too much talking.

Actually the story is a lot more straightforward (as far as Oshii is ever 'straightforward') than Innocence but the world presented here is quite a tricky one to get your head around if you start thinking too much about it. And of course, half the fun of an Oshii movie is thinking too much...

If you liked Jin Roh, you'll probably like this.

So anyway, the world: It's kind of Europe. It's sort of WWII. But then again it's kind of science fiction too. But actually it's not any of these. It's a fantasy world which exists firmly in Oshii's mind, neither post-apocalyptic far-future nor alternative history.

So, there's this group of Japanese pilots, fighting (for a free world) some unspecified enemy (the other team) in what appears to be England, then maybe Poland on what they call the European NORTHERN front (according to the Japanese/English newspapers) and of course the colour TV reports in the American style diner they hang out in... You get the idea. It's a weird mix of nostalgic war-time imagery. In a world which seems to have no national borders where everything is run by corporations.

After an initial exciting CG action scene (with really cool engine noises, if ya like that sort of thing - and Oshii obviously does!) the characters are presented. The 2D animation is quite a shock at first after the smooth CG. It doesn't quite fit. But then again, lots of things 'don't quite fit' in this movie. It's one of the main themes. Oshii keeps introducing strange things about his world throughout while characters muse on the meaning of life and stuff (as Oshii characters are want to do).

What's real? What's not? Why are we here? and, refreshingly, Let's not worry too much about it and go bowling.

There are several revelations about the world the characters inhabit, but it never gets too confusing and Oshii allows you to figure things out for yourself as the movie progresses at its own slow pace (I don't need to point out that Oshii's movies tend to be quite a bit slower than usual anime, do I?). And just in case you need some confirmation about part of the mystery, there's a final shot after the end credits which kind of sums up.

It's probably best not to read too much about the plot. Make up your own mind what's going on.

So, it's a mystery/fantasy/Sci-Fi/alternative history/meaning of life/war movie. Go watch Jin Roh, if you're bored to tears, you probably won't like this either. I loved it!

The film starts out with a young adults as an experienced fighter pilot. We later find out they are "Kildren" and stay young forever. Near the end we find out what Kildren actually are. The film consists of lost of dog fighting and a bunch of pilot interactions. The 3-D graphic were marvelous, unfortunately the characters are 1980's drawn. The two hour film was far too long as it included too many scenes of long pauses where nothing is going on. Did Shatner write this? This is a futuristic world with WWII aircraft. You might want to read the back of the DVD prior to viewing.

Guide: No swearing or nudity. Implied sex.