Film Festival 09 - Sky Crawlers
The Sky Crawlers
Sukai kurora, Japan 2008, 119m
Director: Oshii Mamoru
Festivals: Venice, Toronto, Pusan 2008
Anime master Oshii Mamoru (Ghost in the Shell) returns with his
patented blend of viscerally thrilling aerial action and
future-gazing philosophical rumination. Sky Crawlers is, by Oshii's
standards, a relatively straight-ahead adaptation of Mori Hiroshi's
sci-fi novel about a group of genetically modified eternally-young
fighter aces in a world where war has become a company-sponsored
reality game that never ends. "We begin in a near future alternate
world that fuses noir sensibilities with World War II inspired
retro-future designs& The style is distinctly noir, all muted
emotions and hidden agendas& Sky Crawlers is not only a
stunning technical achievement but also layered with meanings,
obsessed with questions of identity, torn between a love and fear
of technology, and operates in a dreamy haze& a classic
example of intelligent, geared-to- adults animation. Very much
recommended." - Todd Brown, Twitch
In Japanese and English, with English subtitles
