It’s Surreal-ly Complicated: Angel’s Egg
Greetings, all! Love may be in the air today-after all, it is
Valentine’s Day-, but that doesn’t stop me from posting part two of Flashback
February! And truth be told, this week’s
pick doesn’t really put you in a romantic mood.
This week’s pick is…odd. Enough
said. I’ll go into the details later on,
but for now let’s start with the basics on the second pick for Flashback
February, Angel’s Egg.
Angel’s
Egg follows a mysterious little girl who carries a large egg with her
wherever she goes. She soon comes across
a white-haired man carrying what looks like a cross. In all honesty, that’s pretty much the plot
in a nutshell-or in an eggshell in the case being. Much of the film after their encounter is the
two of them following each other around.
Towards the end of the film however, the man breaks the little girl’s
egg while she’s asleep and leaves her behind.
She wakes up the next morning to find her egg in pieces and goes out to
confront the man about it. However, she
falls off a cliff and drowns before she can reach him. At the very end of the film, the white-haired
man appears before a giant floating eye lined with statues of women-a scene
that also takes place in the beginning of the film. However, among the statues is one of the
little girl holding an egg.
I’m going to be honest here, this
was a weird movie. When I watched it, I
didn’t really know what was going on.
Even so, this film had one perk to it that I think really made it stand
out. So in light of all of that, I gave Angel’s Egg a three and a half out of a
five star rating. Like I said, despite
how odd this movie was, there was something pretty impressive with this film
that I really can’t talk trash about; the film is very well animated. Typically, anything released in the eighties
is expected to be pretty stiff when it comes to animation. But Angel’s
Egg is completely different. The
animation is very detailed and very fluid.
And sure, the only two characters don’t show that much emotion, but what
little emotion they do show is pretty distinct and clear to read. Granted, Akira
is considered to be the revolutionary anime film that changed Japanese
animation because of its animation, but I certainly think that Angel’s Egg could have a fair bid
amongst other films. Still, there are
some things that hold it back.
Despite the impressive animation in
this film, Angel’s Egg had more
downsides to it than good. First off,
the movie has no plot. This makes the
movie very difficult to follow and doesn’t give viewers any idea to what they’re
seeing. Second, the movie is very
cryptic. One thing that you have to
understand about Angel’s Egg is that
it is known for its symbolism. Everything in the movie has some meaning
behind it. Even what little dialogue
that is shared between the movie’s two only characters has some sort of hidden
message in it. But this is a problem
because the movie does not give any kind of hint or hook to get the audience
thinking. So in essence, because symbolism
is used to the max in this film, it can be pretty confusing. Even I wasn’t sure what I was watching. And finally, and on a more personal note,
this film is just unsettling sometimes.
The movie has a lot of moments of still images of either characters or
settings. But it doesn’t really help
that the film is dark, in setting that is; for the most part, the film seems to
take place at night. So when they do a
still image of anything for anywhere between thirty seconds to five minutes (in
one case) and you sit there waiting for something to happen, you get pretty creeped
out. So really, this isn’t a movie that
you just randomly want to watch. Now, if
you were an art professor doing a study on surrealism or symbolism in
animation, you would probably get more enjoyment out of this movie. Still, if you really are that interested, you should definitely give it a try- heck, I
did!
So in general, Angel’s Egg is surreal-ly weird. You may
have to be an art professor to make any sense of it, but I certainly don’t
think it’s a terrible movie by any means.
After all, it’s animation can give Akira
a run for its money (if only it had a plot, though). If it peaks your interest, you can buy a copy
on Amazon. However, I recommend that you
watch it on YouTube because it is far easier to access, plus I’m not guaranteeing
you would find a brand shiny new copy of it if you tried to buy it. Besides, I
watched it on YouTube.
Now before I go,
and as promised, I do have an update on the fast-approaching Sailor Moon event. I decided to do a “Versus” event between the
original series and Crystal. I thought it was the best way to really go
about it. So be sure to stay tuned for
that next Sunday. Until then, I’m out!
-Hannah Berryhill
P.S.: And before I forget, Happy
Valentine’s Day!
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