Some years at the New Zealand International Film Festival I manage to see everything I want to see.
There are a bunch of titles that I will get around to.
Between work and volunteering at the festival, my options were limited.
Thankfully, this film turned out to be worth it.
Around the time the Animatrix was released, a box set was released featuring three key anime influences: Akira, Ninja Scroll and Ghost in the Shell.
This box set was my real introduction to anime. Of the trio, Ghost probably made the least impact on my teenage brain.
I found the plotting so complex, I was distracted from the film’s themes. It is a film I am keen to revisit - particularly after watching this film.
Made about a decade before Ghost in the Shell, Angels Egg is the opposite of plot-driven.
Impressionistic, with little dialogue, Angels Egg plays like a poem or a dream.
Filled with nightmarish, post-apocalyptic landscapes, the film plays like a quest narrative - without any clear sense of catharsis.
This is a dead world, a barren place where armed men patrol and hunt for fish which are only shadows (one of the film’s standout sequences).
The only vague chance is the titular egg, cared for by a young girl. She is the one sliver of hope, a nurturer where every other character we meet is armed for war.
I cannot say I fully understood it, but I loved watching it.
Barely seventy minutes long, it never outstays its welcome - and leaves the viewer with plenty to ponder.
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