Avalon

This is a stunningly visual film which takes many of the best elements of the minor sub-genre of 1980s and 1990s sci-fi involving virtual reality, and blends them into an interesting story exploring social withdrawal, addiction, the nature of reality, and the value of life. The film does have a bit of new wave pretentiousness to it - using cliché hacker-names for the players of Avalon, etc, but no more so than many of its competitors (and a bit less than The Matrix). If this sort of thing doesn't appeal to you - and especially if you're the type who wants a film to simply entertain and tell you a simple story, don't bother to read any further.

The film uses a story-telling technique common in good literature but unfortunately under-used in film - that of intentional ambiguity. The best example of this is the main character - well played by Malgorzata Foremniak. You simply don't know what to make of "Ash". Though I found it easy to relate to this character, and I think I understand her, I am not sure most viewers will. In my opinion, Ash is best interpreted as a person with an iron-clad grip on reality, who nevertheless maintains a distance from the people around her, and prefers to keep her relationships "in-game". This is not at all an uncommon personality type, especially among women and mature males in the real worlds of virtual reality and on-line gaming.

The film focuses on Ash's ambitions to become the best player of Avalon - an ultra-real and sometimes deadly virtual reality game - in the world. Avalon is illegal and run on LANs which are set up in what looks like futuristic crack houses. To become recognized as the best, Ash has to complete a level which tends to put anybody who enters it into a catatonic state. She comes to believe that an old team mate of hers - Murphy - inhabits that zone, and wants to rescue him. But of course the designers of the game have other plans, and maybe Murphy himself does as well. Foremniak does a great job of playing this ambiguous yet sympathetic character. Ash, the carefully developed script, the excellent soundtrack, and the superb and beautiful visual effects, all keep you guessing until the very end. I never knew what to expect from this film, and I was very pleased by the way it developed its own concepts of logic and justice - remaining centered on Ash throughout.

Avalon was interesting enough for a second and perhaps a third viewing. I will update my review (if needed) after my next round with it. For now, I will only give it a very high recommendation to anybody who has read this far. After all, if you've read this far in the review, you're probably interested enough in the film to see it.

Avalon can be seen as part of a trilogy, the first installment of which would be Ghost in the Shell, the last, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. Avalon contains many direct references to Ghost in the Shell, and shares a lot of its motif of philosophical search for the self. They also share the cyberpunk imagery, and the fact that the main heroine is an impassive female warrior. I mention all this because I think it's inadvisable to watch Avalon if you haven't watched Ghost in the Shell (and pondered on it a bit). Avalon can be extremely heavy at times. This movie does not make you think; watching Avalon is like trying to decipher a zen poem, which I think can be done, but not through intellectual decoding.

In Avalon, a lone hunter in a virtual reality game shares her life with a basset dog, and all her activities seem to be centered around getting better in the illegal, dangerous game and getting food the dog with the money she earns there. The game is illegal because you can die playing it; "really" die in the concrete, bleak urban world that Ash, the main hero, lives every day. However, apart from the possibility of virtual death, the game offers a secret - the highest level, Avalon. The legendary Avalon is the "Isle of the Blessed", where King Arthur lies in eternal sleep. In the movie, it is a mystery, which haunts Ash ever since the deaths of her last player team.

The search for Avalon is depicted in the most beautiful cinematography. The plot is very symbolic and should be considered so; the search for the gate to Avalon can mean many things, and the nature of the quest changes as Ash is getting closer. However, like Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, the movie is heavy and long, and the characters engage in philosophical discussion every time they can. With all its beautiful cinematography, interesting acting (very automaton-like, but intentionally so), and a set of intriguing philosophical questions, this movie suffers from heavy-handed imagery and symbols, sometimes. Hard science fiction pushes the science as far as possible; Avalon is an example of hard cyberpunk, where the confines of the conceptual world dreamed up by the director are explored fully and unremittingly.

If you are ready to take a film not as only entertainment, but also a challenge to your thinking power, Avalon, like all Oshii's movies, is a thrill. However, beautiful, intellectually rewarding science fiction does not have to be longish and heavy, as Avalon is at times. Watch Ghost in the Shell before it, watch Ghost in the Shell: Innocence after it, and approach this movie at your most relaxed, for it to be a rewarding rewarding experience; it can wear you down, otherwise.

One more thing: if you're Polish, watch the Japanese dub with English subtitles. The Polish lines were translated literally from the Japanese, and they are very often almost gibberish (and the Japanese voice-acting is better, too). Also, do not let the fact that the movie's virtual world seems to be set in your local K-mart detract from your watching experience.

There is an interesting parallel between The Matrix and Avalon. The first is heavily based on Manga/Animee style, in visual dynamics much more than in pace as well as storytelling, the latter IS an Animee movie without the animations - in fact, Avalon is a VERY typical Oshii film in every other aspect going.

It's slow. It has to be. It either bores you stiff or chains you to a subtle, incredibly intense way of visual storytelling - takes you back to a time when the attention span as well as the will required to catch a drift - to hold a thought and work on it - lived longer than a few seconds.

On the surface, this movie is what one could call a cyberpunk poem. For that alone it already claims a unique position amongst whatever one might want to compare it to at first glance. A chillingly dark and detailed as well as beautifully crafted ballad of a heroine seeking much more than sense between realities and illusions. She seeks the home we all desperately try to cling to in belief for lack of knowledge.

As always in Oshii's movies, one has to be prepared to be drawn into the unsettling realm between suffocating rules of conduct and complete uncertainty to get at the tiny grain of hope hovering so painfully close to the wheels that try to grind you.

The dialogue doesn't tell us much. In fact, the more wordy the explanations get, the more they deflect us from what we see and feel. That's pretty much what Ash has to cope with as well to find the way to HER reality as well as illusion.

To call the acting understated, slow and painfully introverted would be an understatement in itself. To call it bad for that would be the most idiotic conclusion. Malgorzata Foremniak (Ash) is a true discovery. The intensity and sheer impact she can give to 'silence' alone makes her the ideal Oshii actress. There is no empty move, no hollow gesture, no shallow expression in her entire performance. Quite an accomplishment if one keeps in mind that Ash leads a depressingly empty, hollow as well as shallow life on the surface.

It's an equally depressing fact that this incredible Polish actress will stay in obscurity as far as the billion dollar mainstream movie world is concerned.

The cinematography and lighting by Grzegorz Kedzierski is nothing short of exquisite. So is Barbara Novak's production design. Budget-wise, this is a B-Movie, but they all turned that restriction into a virtue.

One last praise has to go to the composer as well as the musicians. The title track 'Avalon' alone, a grand piece for orchestra, choir and soprano, is nothing short of a masterpiece.

As I said, this movie is a poem. Take a quiet place, wind down from the hassle of your day and let yourself sink into illusions which might even show the occasional glint of YOUR reality.

* 10 out of 10

Schogger13

I noticed the movie got rated somewhat better by the younger part of the public and frankly, that doesn't surprise me. You'll have to have played an online shoot-em-up or war game at least once to see why the idea of a gamer making a life of her addiction in a near future isn't such an outlandish idea.

Avalon takes this idea to new extremes, without being cheap or easy and adds a healthy dose of magical realism. The artwork is stunning, the soundtrack very strong (and classical instead of the usual techno), the acting is cool and distant, which is all perfect for the dark setting. Even the choice of Poland as the scenery seems right on.

Why then doesn't this flic deserve a 10? Well, although I liked the story and though it does have depth, it is a bit one-dimensional. The world doesn't seem to harbor more than this one story and that's a shame. The movie could have become a classic with a little bit more background plot. But nonetheless, a must-see.

There is a lot to recommend this movie, including a richly-stylized world, exciting action, and excellent music. I will admit that I was first interested in this movie because I knew of the director Mamoru Oshii from the anime "Ghost in the Shell", so I wasn't surprised to find that the movie felt much like a very stylized high-quality anime movie. Indeed, I wasn't surprised that the Japanese director revealed (in an interview included with the DVD I watched) that his relationship with the Polish actress playing the main character Ash was much like his relationship with a character from one of his anime projects, since he could no more communicate personally with Malgorzata Foremniak than he could with one of his anime characters. To him, the actress was entirely her character, and it's intriguing to see what became of that very unusual relationship on film.

I'm always wary of getting carried away with a first reaction to a film, so I should admit that this film isn't perfect. I found myself wanting to know more about the background of the main character, and her family, and how she came to become the person we see in the film; certainly, Malgorzata Foremniak does a very good job of playing a character whose fantasy life (the life of her online RPG character) is more real than her 'real' life, but the lack of background detail makes her character Ash very much like a two-dimensional anime character, and that can be considered a weakness. Also, this movie bears an obvious similarity to "The Matrix" (which predated it), so most viewers will inevitably compare this movie to "The Matrix" and find it perhaps wanting in that it doesn't lay out the background of the virtual world of the Avalon RPG as clearly as "The Matrix" lays out the background of its world.

These factors notwithstanding, I still enjoyed "Avalon" and I recommend it to anyone with more than a passing interest in virtual reality stories, anime, or highly-stylized science fiction in general. In the aforementioned interview, the director mentions that his films tend to deal with a borderline between fantasy and reality, and it's quite apparent that Ash's 'real world' is somehow both grittier, and less real, than the world of the Avalon RPG which she's so obsessed with. The action sequences in the film (featuring real-world equipment from the Polish army, such as tanks and attack helicopters) are exciting in their own right, but the special effects of the film (such as explosions reduced to 2-D images and bystanders who disintegrate when shot) make it clear what is supposedly real and what is supposedly virtual. Also, the contrast between fantasy and reality is much more vivid here than in the Matrix movies - and that's especially apparent toward the end of the movie where the viewer is left to wonder just what (if anything) is ultimately real, and what is simply imagined. Also, I must say that the music of this film is extraordinary, including choral music that is downright eerie, but also beautiful at the same time. A world both real and unreal is conjured very effectively in this movie, and therefore I would recommend it to any fans of this sub-genre of science fiction in particular, and fans of highly-stylized film-making in general.