REVIEW - GHOST IN THE SHELL 2.0
Just watched Ghost in the Shell
for the first time. What
an incredible film. It achieved more in an hour and a half than most
modern science fiction films seem to do in their 3 hours plus. The
questions it raised were
incredibly intriguing, and the future it proposes bleak, but in such a
believable
way. When I first heard about Ghost in the Shell it was
something along the lines of "Oh yeah, that’s the anime with the chick who can
only go naked if she’s invisible, right?" and those words made me really
cynical about watching the film. I truly did not expect something so deep and
well executed. Made in 1995? So ahead of its time.
I am very interested in what the future will be like. I am interested in sci-fi, and I regularly listen to a FrogPants Studios podcast called FourCast (see here for what the show is all about). Listening to it one day on a road-trip with friends, we entered into a discussion about the nature of humans senses and technology, when and how they would merge, and the implications of that. Ghost in the Shell is all those ideas eloquently and intriguingly presented in 82 minutes of beautiful animation.
So far I have raved only about the narrative - which owes largely to the manga on which it is based - but it takes more than great narrative to make a great film. The animation style is really interesting. The merging of computer graphics and traditional animation make for a really well depicted world. The anime (traditional) style is better suited to scenes of human interaction and computer graphics are suited to depicting machines and environments The colouring is beautiful, as is the soundtrack. The unusual score includes a dramatic main theme of chanting-style singing over a minimalist drumming melody. This piece contrasts dramatically with the futuristic visuals to remind us of the base and primitive qualities of human nature, which are also some of the major themes the film explores - a desire to belong and a desire to know oneself. The moral dilemmas surrounding the invention of artificial intelligence are also explored.
Where some shots and details included in the film at first seem irrelevant, you realise by the end that not one moment of it was wasted. There are no unnecessary close-ups, or panning. Everything shown in the film works towards the deepening of the narrative and the setting. The 'ghost' and 'shell' concepts, central to the setting, provide a good framework in which ideas about how far human bodies and minds can be stretched before they are no longer 'human' can be explored. Searching for a definitive answer to that question is the core of Ghost in the Shell, and it is a beautiful and intriguing exploration of that question.
I am very interested in what the future will be like. I am interested in sci-fi, and I regularly listen to a FrogPants Studios podcast called FourCast (see here for what the show is all about). Listening to it one day on a road-trip with friends, we entered into a discussion about the nature of humans senses and technology, when and how they would merge, and the implications of that. Ghost in the Shell is all those ideas eloquently and intriguingly presented in 82 minutes of beautiful animation.
So far I have raved only about the narrative - which owes largely to the manga on which it is based - but it takes more than great narrative to make a great film. The animation style is really interesting. The merging of computer graphics and traditional animation make for a really well depicted world. The anime (traditional) style is better suited to scenes of human interaction and computer graphics are suited to depicting machines and environments The colouring is beautiful, as is the soundtrack. The unusual score includes a dramatic main theme of chanting-style singing over a minimalist drumming melody. This piece contrasts dramatically with the futuristic visuals to remind us of the base and primitive qualities of human nature, which are also some of the major themes the film explores - a desire to belong and a desire to know oneself. The moral dilemmas surrounding the invention of artificial intelligence are also explored.
Where some shots and details included in the film at first seem irrelevant, you realise by the end that not one moment of it was wasted. There are no unnecessary close-ups, or panning. Everything shown in the film works towards the deepening of the narrative and the setting. The 'ghost' and 'shell' concepts, central to the setting, provide a good framework in which ideas about how far human bodies and minds can be stretched before they are no longer 'human' can be explored. Searching for a definitive answer to that question is the core of Ghost in the Shell, and it is a beautiful and intriguing exploration of that question.
