This review was commissioned by Ri Ri over on my Ko-fi account.
Heavy with atmosphere and style, Angel’s Egg can’t help but draw the eye in. There’s something to behold on basically every frame, immediately capturing one’s attention with an extended period of silence as an exquisitely rendered hand flexes on screen. There’s more detail and emotion in that opening sequence than can be found in most live action films, and that sort of rich, compelling art can be found across the entire runtime. A haunting quality permeates the wasteland that Mamoru Oshii renders here. Shattered glass inside empty apartments, grotesque carvings of fish stand watch like gargoyles, and Giger-esque tanks roam the streets. All of it done with these beautiful ink strokes and vivid painted background. Perhaps most striking here is the use of light and water, where the art somehow captures the fluid motion of both. So many scenes feature water captured from various states–still as a mirror, shifting lazily under a night breeze, or coming down in thin lines as rain. The same goes for the light, casting our characters in stark shadow or moving seductively behind an open window.
The setting is harsh in a way that beautifully offsets the main protagonist, an unnamed girl protecting the titular egg. For much of the film, she carries it beneath her dress, the shape of it granting her a look of pregnancy in this ravaged world. The only other significant character is an unnamed boy, wielding a cross-like weapon. The evocative imagery present here brings up so many different themes–the femininity of the egg against the phallic cross, innocent life against violence, and even Christian religious imagery which director Oshii has a noted fascination with.
The latter might be the most explicit of these themes as one of the only scenes of dialogue in the film has the boy recount the story of Noah’s Ark, except in a world where the dove never returns, leaving the Ark and its inhabitants suspended in an endless waiting, drifting aimlessly upon the floodwater. It’s here that a mostly silent and visual film gives us the most overt discussions about the movie’s themes. I’m not too proud to say that even with that, I still sought out further knowledge online after giving this a watch. Interpretations of this film touch primarily on themes of loss in a post-World War II Japan, whereas Oshii’s own discussions on the film center primarily on ideas of the religious imagery.
I confess my own experience with the film to be a little more primal than that. Between the girl’s glowing skin, the egg’s evocation of pregnancy along with general symbolic connections femininity and even virginity, and the sense of senseless and unseen violence as expressed through ghostly fishermen throwing harpoons at the shadows of giant fish, the most violent act of the film stands out the most. When the boy destroys the egg with his cross, the aftermath is devastating. The girl holds broken eggshells in her hands and lets out a bloodcurdling cry of anguish that echoes through the wasteland. It’s a brutal betrayal, and one that doesn’t even come out of nowhere as the boy spends much of his dialogue pondering the egg’s contents and advocating for opening it up. Regardless, the sense of loss is powerful, with the symbolism and vocal performances bringing forth feelings of an implied sexual violence here.
That vivid experience combined with the truly impressive art does a lot for the film, especially given that most of it I spent in silent respect more than engaged emotion. Angel’s Egg invites the viewer to sit with it and inhabit its world for a while, but does little to present any overly concrete ideas of its own. I do believe that’s by design, and the hollow nature of the world in the film is just begging to be filled with meaning and thought from the viewer themselves. Perhaps a future viewing will bring more from me on that front. On this go around though, I couldn’t bring much to it beyond an admiration for the art and a gut reaction to its final act.
Rating (Letterboxd scale): ***1/4
