The Sky Crawlers is the latest animated film from Mamoru Oshii, the director of Ghost in the Shell 1 & 2 fame. It was released in Japan during August and I had the chance to catch it when I visited a friend in Kyoto.
Oshii’s films are not the easiest to watch. They have more in common with the French New Wave than the standard Hollywood staple most of us are used to, and so his movies speak in a different language from what most of us are used to hearing.
Oshii doesn’t rely on plot as much as his visuals to tell the story, using the power of the moving picture (literally) to its full effect. Every single frame is composed beautifully, and they tell the story as much as the dialogue and the plot; sometimes even more so – it’s almost like admiring a series of paintings move past your eyes.
To watch The Sky Crawlers then, is not to expect to be led by Oshii’s narrative into a classical three-act structure where everything is plainly explained, but to sit back, and let yourself infuse the entire experience of sight and sound, as well as story. And if you’re patient enough, the movie’s heart and the heart of Mamoru Oshii slowly unwraps before you.
Sounds melodramatic to drag the person himself into his film, but after The Sky Crawlers and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, it’s hard to believe that Oshii makes movies for anyone other than himself. If you admire Oshii’s work, that is this auteur’s strength; his ability to suffuse himself throughout his movies and make you feel as he does through them. The Sky Crawlers couldn’t have been made by anyone who didn’t have a strong sense of self, and you feel Oshii’s urgent, existential hand in every moment of the movie.
It’s a languid, lush movie for those willing to soak through it, and it left me with a profound yet beautiful sense of loss. I enjoyed the movie, and at the end of it I was left without a doubt who Mamoru Oshii was. Like a fine wine or an irreproachable jazz solo, the meaning behind The Sky Crawlers cannot be reasoned out, but felt.
P.S. Be sure to stay until after the end credits for two reasons. One, to enjoy the beautiful song by Ayaka which so aptly rounds up the movie. And two, for the real ending of the movie.
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Perhaps you would like to watch “5 centimeters per second”. Very detailed artwork and the story telling is a classic.
I’ve seen the director’s earlier films Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days – a little too emotional for me
Yah, I know what you mean. I’m surprised how dialogues and a simple plot can tug at my heartstrings.