Review of Avalon (2001) by Chuck P — 27 Oct 2009

I knew I had to see this when I realized it was the only live-action film directed by Mamoru Oshii, acclaimed director of Ghost in the Shell, among other things. I was expecting a few interesting ideas and images that would finally collapse under the weight of their own ambition, and in a way that's exactly what I received, but it's such an incomparably odd experience that I feel my time was very well spent.

The first thing you should know is that this film is orange. You have never seen color correction this extreme. For 90% of the film's running time, there is no color on screen that does not start with the letter 'O'.

The second thing is that if you've ever wondered what it would look like if someone shot a live-action film as close as possible to an anime aesthetic, this is the closest you will ever get. Watching this film, it often looks like someone took a finished anime movie and spent millions of dollars meticulously re-creating every frame and composition with real people and props, and as one might expect it often looks utterly ridiculous.

It's hard to take seriously, and at first I thought that was due to Oshii's inexperience with live-action, but the bizarre atmosphere of the film does actually kind of pay off in the final scenes which I won't spoil here.

Oshii's very interested in the notion that an illusion can be more seductive and comfortable than reality (see: The Sky Crawlers) and while that concept is pretty overplayed in modern sci-fi, Avalon offers a distinct and unique, if fairly straightforward, take on the idea.

It's not a very good film, but it's different from just about everything else, and sometimes that's even better than succeeding blandly.