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AVALON
7/10
Japan (Jpn/Fr/Pol) 2001 : Mamuro Oshii : 106 mins
A futuristic, convoluted tale of virtual-reality gaming, Avalon ventures
into territory that’s already been apparently well-covered by David Cronenberg
in eXistenZ and the Wachowski brothers in The Matrix. The
grim Polish locations recall Stalker-era
Tarkovsky, the Andrzej Wajda of Ashes
and Diamonds, and maybe even Michael Radford’s 1984: the
monochrome has a sepia tint as if the celluloid has been dipped in a mixture
of cold tea, piss and nicotine. It all adds up to a very familiar kind
of dystopian tomorrow-land in which, we are solemnly informed, the youth
have become so ‘disillusioned’ they have retreated into an alternative
‘illusion’ of their own: the illegal, “addicive” (sic) battle-simulation
known as Avalon, a game with mystical, Arthurian overtones.
One expert ‘game warrior’ – a stern-faced, bob-haired young woman known as Ash
(Malgorzata Foremniak) - becomes obsessed with accessing a secret advanced
layer called ‘Class Real.’ But getting to this stage proves equally difficult
for both Ash and Avalon’s audience – the action sequences are often
spectacular, but with no real sense of dramatic pacing to link them together.
These are interspersed with lengthy examinations of Ash’s mundane non-gaming
life, in which portentous dialogue sequences abound - only the most attentive
viewer will be able to grasp exactly what’s going on at each stage, although
cinematographer Grzegorz Kedzierski’s images are never less than intriguing
to look at.
Oshii and scriptwriter Kazunori Ito (reportedly working with the help of Neil
Gaiman) are clearly engaged in some kind of debate about the nature of
reality, and how it differs from and interweaves with ‘escapist’ simulations
such as computer-games and, by extension, cinema itself. Most of this
is very old news, though there is one effective innovation in the ‘game-world’:
when characters are ‘killed’ they go from 3-D to 2-D before shattering
in tiny fragments, though of course they’re only 2-D projections on our
movie-screen to begin with. And on the script side there’s an intriguing
allusion to the ‘Crown of Oblivion’ placed on King Arthur’s head as he
travelled towards his Avalon (i.e. heaven) that made him “forget
the world outside”: just like Ash’s virtual-reality headset, and, by extension,
a description of the effect Oshii is aiming to have on his own audiences.
He doesn’t actually achieve this until well over an hour in, when Ash finally
penetrates to Class Real… and the film takes a left-turn as deliciously
disorienting as anything in Mulholland
Dr. Entering the ‘gateway’ to the secret level by way of a young
female ‘ghost’ (Zuzanna Kasz), Ash emerges into what looks very much like
modern-day Warsaw. Piss-tea-nicotine sepia suddenly giving way to regular
movie colour, and the effect is radical and startling - these ‘normal’
sequences of Ash making her way around the city feel no less bizarre than
the hyper-distorted images from the first part of the movie. She follows
‘clues’ that lead her to a classical music concert where a soprano (Elzbieta
Towamicka) sings an ethereal solo – the ‘Avalon’ theme we’ve heard at
various stages beforehand.
By now, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of Avalon – as
someone says about Class Real, “in many ways, it’s still experimental.”
But whatever longueurs he’s put us through on the way, Oshii finally
succeeds in creating a unique atmosphere in which reality shimmers ominously,
like a fragile dream. By this stage we’re inclined to go along with him
even at those moments where he’s again sidetracked by perfunctory metaphysical
speculations – as when Ash is lectured about how “reality is just an obsession
that takes hold of us!” Despite the po-faced line readings by the Polish
actors, there’s a surprising streak of surreal humour that runs through
the movie, much of it revolving around Ash’s runaway dog whose mournful
face crops up on the concert posters in the modern-day sections, implying
that perhaps he’s the ‘brains’ behind it all.
The final moments swing the benefit of the doubt decisively in Oshii’s direction
– the last, computer-manipulated shot of the phantasmal Kasz is aggressively
enigmatic but it’s also aggressively beautiful, and Kenji Iwai’s soaring
choral orchestrations leading us into the end-titles on something like
an ecstatic high. The remarkable soundtrack isn’t the only good reason
for sticking around through these titles: there’s a prominent thank-you
from Ishii to the Polish armed forces (their readiness to loan their troops
and tanks was apparently the main reason for filming there), and also
the information that the deft aural effects were achieved with the help
of George Lucas’s Skywalker Sound people. Let’s hope Lucas saw the finished
product - Avalon isn’t perfect by a long way, but he could clearly
do a hell of a lot worse than entrust Oshii with Star
Wars Episode 3. In some virtual alternative reality, it might
just happen – but even in this world, Iwai should definitely do the music.
17th December, 2002
(seen same day: Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle)
by Neil
Young
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