Review
GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE
Featuring the voices of Akio Ohtsuka, Atsuko Tanaka and Koichi Yamadera
Directed by Mamoru Oshii
Opens Friday, December 10
Uptown Screen
Who doesn’t love a cyborg detective who likes to quote Milton? Not Mamoru Oshii, the anime maverick who has crafted an unusually thoughtful sequel to his 1995 genre classic.
Four years in production, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is a new benchmark for Japanese animation for its technical achievement and its provocative content. Using techniques Oshii mastered in his audacious 2001 live-action feature Avalon (which finally surfaced on video in Canada earlier this year), the style combines expressive 2-D characters with 3-D computer-generated environments and photorealistic backgrounds. The film’s dragon-filled festival sequence alone took a year to create. Consequently, the movie is primarily of visual appeal. Drawn from such diverse sources as Blade Runner, ancient Japanese myth and Gothic architecture, the look of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is opulent and the action sequences bold and wildly kinetic.
Yet, despite the occasional frenzy of explosions, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is ruminative in nature. In the movie’s vision of 2032, human, animal and machine have intermingled to such an extent that distinctions between forms of life are largely arbitrary. Most citizens keep humanoid dolls or cloned pets to satisfy their emotional needs. Introduced in the first film as the partner of the Major (who’s since transcended the corporeal realm, but still drops by every so often to help out), the cyborg detective Batou investigates the murder of a human by a "gynoid," a hyper-realistic sexbot. Evidence points to a nefarious conspiracy, the exact details of which are difficult to decipher even by the logic-straining standards of anime.
The story serves chiefly as a springboard for Ishii’s enquiry into humanity’s future. The dialogue is dominated by philosophical and literary quotations – besides Paradise Lost, Batou borrows his lines from Shakespeare, Confucius, Shelley and the Bible. (Oshii was a seminary student before making his name with TV’s Urusei Yatsura.) As a result, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence resembles a philosophy lecture interrupted by the occasional blast of cartoon ultraviolence. That perverse strategy may not be for everyone, but it sure kept me awake. |
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