Avalon - The Film
Created | Updated Apr 15, 2003
Avalon is a film from Mamoru Oshii, the director of Ghost in the Shell. With a similar theme to Ghost but using live-action instead of animation, Avalon shows a more mature view of the world than that previous film and it is definately more thought-provoking1. Filmed in Poland, and seemigly influenced by European Art House, it was almost universally, and unfairly, panned by critics2. The film runs at a pace not often seen, 'slow' as some called it, but really a pace that needs a longer attention span than people3 today seem willing to give to films. The striking visuals and colouring each lend subtle interpretations to what is being seen and what is happening.
Avalon gives nothing away for free, but it is original, striking, gorgeous and leaves you to interpret it in your own way. Though some similar themes are raised in The Matrix, Avalon follows them more deftly and deeper bringing the viewer into the film in a way that the Matrix could not. This is a film that makes people take away questions, makes them think, and will bring them together to discuss it. Some would say that this film is destined to garner a great underground following, and so eventually become a cult classic. It will never make box office gold, but if someone, somewhere is looking for a film to make people think then this is it.
To compliment Avalon's parsimonious handing out of answers this review is going to be deliberately vague, hardly even touching on parts of the film, or ideas brought up, so that there will be no spoilage for potential viewers. The parts not mentioned, and some of the ideas may be brought up in another Entry, but here are not even glossed over. Like the film it will be deliberately ambiguous.
The Synopsis
The near future. Some people deal with their disillusionment by seeking out illusions of their own - in an illegal virtual reality war game. Its simulated thrills and deaths are compulsive and addictive. Some players, working in teams called 'parties' even earn their living from the game. The game has its dangers. Sometimes it can leave a player brain-dead, needing constant medical care. Such victims are called 'unreturned'. The game is named after the legendary island where the souls of departed heroes come to rest: Avalon.
The film is set in the near-future in an unnamed, run-down city, where the disenfranchised poor and downtrodden find escape in virtual reality computer games. Games that are disturbingly realistic, addictive and damaging. Banned by the authorities they move underground and it is here that we find the heroine of the piece - Ash. Ash is a player in the eponymous Avalon game.
Avalon is a war game, players take the part of soldiers and go on missions. Each mission accrues the player experience points, different mission classes reward with differeing amounts of experience, which as it rises take them up the game's levels. As well as experience points successfully completed missions can earn the players cash to be spent on whatever. Ash is such a person, making a living from playing Avalon.
Originally part of the ultimate Avalon team, Team Wizard, she is now working her way up the ranks of the solo players and is now the best player in her branch, so good as to play in Class A. An ex-member of Team Wizard tracks her down and tells her that Team Wizard's leader, Murphey, is now amongst the 'unreturned' - people put into coma's by the game. He also mentions that Murphey was trying, as the best of the best in Avalon, to get the chance to move into a hidden area of the
game, Class Special A, where the game cannot be reset. With the help of her ex-team member and a mysterious Bishop4 Ash heads off to find the ghost in the machine and the key to Class Special A....
The Style
The synopsis does no justification to the film whatsoever. It is not even a pale ghost of justification. The story is told in an incredible way, shot in an almost monochromatic sepia with small parts of the frame in full colour, drawing the eye to it, making you wonder at the significance of that particular object. With scenes all the way through the film being almost, or possibly totally, identical it can seem that all principle photography was shot in one three day stretch.
Though Ash's ordinary life seems dark and unintresting, the world seemingly almost static, the game world, when she is on missions is lighter, sharper, more alive. The soldiers slogging through the muck, the tanks and the fantastic helicopters5. The sharpness becoming almost cruel as the people die, disintigrate and shattering as their game persona is wiped out. The light and sharpness allows the games to seem a better
place than the rundown, dark reality that the players normally inhabit.
The operatic and orchestral soundtrack, written for the film, suits the piece perfectly. Not only does it suit the piece perfectly but it also wriggles into your own mind, either taken there by, or taking with it, some of the questions that the film raises. Not used in huge amounts it allows silence and sound effects their own reign, seeming to connect the film more to reality than many other offerings on the silver screen. Like the colouring this also allows the sound to carry
it's own significance, highlighting points, making the viewer wonder further and deeper.
So, to See Avalon or Not?
Avalon is not a film for everyone, it is not mainstream in any way, shape or form. There are arguments both for and against going to see this film....
1. Ye Gods, yes! Though you will be lucky to find it, though Miramax have it and may be planning a larger release6. It is thought provoking, dark, stylish. It is unlike anything else out there and though from this review it may seem like Matrix-lite7 it is deeper and defter than the Matrix.
2. No way! It is slow, it is incomprehensible, it is subtitled. It has a minute of ultra close focus on a slob eating a fried breakfast, with no soundtrack but him munching. What the f*ck was that all about? Aaaaahhhh get me out of here. Well that was two hours of my life I will never get back.
With most things in this world you get out what you put in. With Avalon you get out both more and less than what you put in. As to if you should go and see it the author recommends it, but it depends on the person you are. This film will show how deep the rabbit hole goes.
the critics on television, the internet critics are much more positive about it, coming close to 'undecided' and 'ambivilant', some even rave about it.3At least most people in the UK, or it would have had a larger release.4One of the classes that people can play as.5Along with a real Hind in there. The Polish Army provided some of the equipment.6Of
course they may be planning to butcher it for a more mainstream audience and box office.7Reality, virtual reality, who are you? etc.
