A bell rings out across the nocturnal city. On darkened streets of brick buildings and cobblestone pavement walks a lone girl egg concealed in her shirt trying to navigate its labyrinthian structure. Her striped pink sweater and dark red coat stand out in the bleak alleyways while her droopy countenance bears a hint of dejection and dismay. And yet she pushes on. What could she be searching for? And why is the city so quiet? Theres something special about Angels Egg. Across its 90minute runtime dialogue is sparse and characters few: things happen seemingly without cause and we are transported from landscape to landscape as if viewing the journey through a hazy window able to make out only an adumbration. Discarding conventional rules of storytelling director Mamoru Oshii doubles down on the unity of sound and visuals. Here there is no true meaning no correct interpretation. The movie is whatever you make of it. This makes Angels Egg tough to review. How do you evaluate that which doesnt have a clear purpose? I thought long and hard about this and eventually I decided to focus on my personal interpretationwhat the movie means to me. Of course I could play it safe and describe only what is certain but that wouldnt yield much so Im willing to make a gamble. I have no doubt that some will read this review and think he got it all wrong he missed the point and thats alright. No two people will come out of Angels Egg the same and if anything a disagreement like that would only speak volumes about the strength of the movie its ability to proliferate within its viewers in so many ways to be approached from so many angles and still enjoyed regardless of the one you take. The director himself has recognized this. When it comes down to it I think the director doesnt know everything about the movie. Everyone always thinks if you want to know something talk to the director. I dont think thats true. I think the answer lies inside every single viewer. A story doesnt belong only to its creator: it belongs to everyone who consumes and shares it. Oshii is bold enough to conceal his intentions and instead ask what do you think this means? That to me is the beauty of art that a single story can reveal new aspects in each member of its audience. Art is about the creators intention yes but its also about interpretation. By now my newfound passion for Angels Egg should be clear. I watched it only a month ago at the time of writing yet it has already placed itself among my favorite pieces of media. In this review Ill delve into why its so special to me and I hope youll join me along the way. Without further ado lets begin 900https://i.ur.com/g3IGH63.png The Tale of AbrahamWe all know the story of Abraham condemned first by old age to not have children and then upon finally conceiving a son to travel for days and sacrifice him. In his tribulations one thing kept him going: faith. When God commands him to sacrifice Isaac his beloved son he does not weep or tremble rather he carries out the act with willpowerfor he believes. In 1843 Danish philosopher Sren Kierkegaard published his philosophical essay Fear and Trembling. Written under a pseudonym the essay attempts to understand Abrahams faith while also giving birth to a religious existentialist philosophy. Kierkegaard argues that in remaining faithful to God the individual can draw strength and face any number of challenges. On the matter of Abrahams determination he states the following: Abraham believed and therefore he was young for he who always hopes for the best becomes old deceived by life and he who is always prepared for the worst becomes old prematurely but he who has faith retains eternal youth. To Kierkegaard faith in God represents an acceptance of all fortune and misfortune as belonging to the will of a higher being. Whether Abrahams actions his conviction to kill Isaac were ethically wrong doesnt matter it was the will of God and God transcends universal morality. However he also believes in the free will of the individual the power to act as you please. Everyone is of the same value except the one who loves God they are greater than all. While those who concern themselves only with the secular are constricted by the sands of time the faithful can transcend the boundaries of their mortal coils and exist too in the eternal. As such their meaning transcends humanity. You could rob them of their loved ones burn down their home break their limbs one by one they are through their faith in God and salvation protected from earthly pain. But not everyone is Abraham. It takes immense willpower to resign oneself to the absurdity of a higher powerwhat Kierkegaard calls a leap of faithand in this world there are few whose faith outrivals their earthly desires. Throughout the book he expresses his utmost adoration for Abraham but he cannot no matter how hard he tries replicate his faith. He knows what to do he tries his hardest to perform the leap but he always comes up short he is always dragged down by human emotions 900https://i.ur.com/1eKbb58.png In Angels Egg the girl represents faith. She carries the egg and trots from place to place believing it to contain something important but she doesnt know its contents. And yet shes sure it most contain something. She hopes. Similarly the religious individual cannot definitively prove the existence of a god yet they are convinced there must be one that somewhere out there a higher being resides. This is the essence of faith: as stated in Fear and Trembling it begins precisely where thinking leaves off. But what would happen if this hope turned out to be futile? A Crushing RealityOn her journey the angel is accompanied by a mysterious boy. Gloomy in disposition and blunt in his way of speech the boy serves as a contrast to our protagonist. He uses any chance he gets to question the nature of the egg and its contents and he always seems to appear out of nowhere suddenly standing by the girls side when she least expects it. In his hand he carries a staff of foreign technology an object whose nature is never revealed to us. Hes a walking enigma a person whose blue coat seems to hide a hundred secrets. As a character he serves to confront the girls beliefs along the way but also to provide her company. His motives are beside the point. Theyre the only two characters which also limits the amount of dialogue. Because of this every line feels meaningful: as I watching I would frequently pause to scribble down sentences that resonated with me in my notes and even now I have these stored in a document like my own little stash of meaning. Together they traverse a bleak world. Outside the city we see only dust and ruin: grass fields coated blue by the moonlight punctuated only by a few standing stones trees whose tangled branches look like fingers of the dead and gigantic bones of longdead creatures. In this landscape the girl emits an aura of light while the boy blends right in. This setting combined with the haunting sometimes choral soundtrack creates a haunting atmosphere. Often the only sound well hear is that of the wind as it slides across the landscapes making the occasional shriek all the more frightening and offputting. The world of Angels Egg is scary not because we know what happened but because we dont. Its a mystery. 900https://i.ur.com/xx8Jhg4.png Past this point the review will include spoilers. Considering the obtuse nature of Angels Egg these spoilers will not ruin the experience although Id advise you to watch the movie before reading further. An Absurd Revolt The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments towards that lower world whence he will have to push it up again towards the summit. He goes back down to the plain. This is a quote from Albert Camus philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Published in 1942 the book sought not only to elucidate the reason as to why people commit suicide but also to explore in depth Camus philosophy of revoltthe one he dubbed absurdism. In many ways it can be seen as a response to the religious existentialists like Kierkegaard who having arrived at the absurd nevertheless fell back on their god and continued to hope. Kierkegaard tells us to throw ourselves into the absurd Camus wants us to rebel against it: if we are conscious of the futility of our efforts yet continue them without yielding we can push against our own fate. To put it in laymans terms: by declaring life meaningless and at the same time continuing to take pleasure in the things around us we defy the lack of meaning. To many Sisyphus fate seems tragic and bleak. But that doesnt stop him. In remaining conscious in every step of the misfortune that awaits himthe boulder rolling back down the mountainhe finds his meaning. It wouldve been meaningless for him to hope that one day the boulder would remain at the top and his duty end because he knows there is no such salvation. So on he pushes up and down the mountain although not to subject himself to the punishment of the gods but rather to riot against it. As Camus puts it the lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. Sisyphus predicament is not so different from ordinary life. We wake up in the morning go to work from 9 to 5 go home again and the next day the work has returned and the cycle repeats anew. At some point we start questioning why were doing this. Whats keeping us going? This is what Camus regards as consciousness and from consciousness follows either a return to the cycle or the awakening. The awakening is the important part. This is where the individual can choose between surrendering to a higher purpose to hope or revolting against the absurd. And to Camus revolt is the better option: he believes that through hope the individual deceives oneself lives in ignorance whereas recognizing the absurd allows one to live fully. Rather than preparing for and expecting an afterlife the absurd individual can put all their focus on the current one. This ultimately is the point. Many shudder when hearing the phrase life is meaningless but it doesnt have to be a negative declaration. If life is meaningless that merely allows us to choose our own meaning as opposed to a predefined one and what about that could possibly be terrifying? Lets return to Sisyphus. Whenever he reaches the top and sees the boulder roll down again he doesnt let it get the better of him. Rather he takes pride in the struggle carves out his own meaningas should we. The task that was once cruel and bleak now takes on a new meaning one decided on by himself. As Camus concludes one must imagine Sisyphus happy. 900https://i.ur.com/mpjdA2U.jpg Towards the end of Angels Egg the boy opts to destroy the egg in secret. When the girl discovers this she is first furiousand then she despairs. Not because the egg has been destroyed but because in the end it contained nothing. All along her hope had been empty a futile search for meaning a leap of faith that led to a fall. This plot point could be interpreted in multiple ways. The most obvious would be that religion is ignorance but I think thats too cynical a view and not Oshiis aim. The way I see it the girl losing her hope is meant not as a message about religion as a whole but rather as an examination of the individual. As Kierkegaard discussed faith is something that needs to be maintained. Its delicate and could easily break. The same can be said for the absurdist. Although we can easily write on paper that life itself is meaningless and purpose is something we need to find ourselves sticking to this can be as hard as it is for the religious to retain hope. When life comes at us with all its got throwing our minds into turmoil the idea of a higher purpose can be comforting. It can help us pick ourselves up. To resist that pull the inclination to hope is easier said than done. If it sounds like Im assuming two conflicting stances thats because I am. Even if I prefer one over the other I cant tell you which is correct. Both Kierkegaard and Camus encountered the absurd but their interpretations of it were wildly different and these are only two of many philosophers. Humankind has been debating the meaning of life since the dawn of existence and even now we are not one step closer to an answer. In this sense the narrative of Angels Eggthe desperate search for meaning however fleetingrepresents one of the largest human dilemmas: do we hope or not? 900https://i.ur.com/pqTNMcB.png On the ShoreThroughout history religion has provided people with purpose. When the Vikings saw lightning on the horizon they concluded that it must be the anger of a fierce god when the ancient Greeks came upon cypress trees so gaunt and lonely they created a myth to explain its predicament. Humans crave understanding yet often the world works against that thus it is that we create our own explanations of its phenomena. In Angels Egg the girl comes up with her explanation for the eggs origin. Long ago Noah stood on the ark and sent out a dove to search for land. The bird did not return. Although the pessimist would argue the bird drowned somewhere in the sea she believes it mustve found land eventually landed there and planted the egg. Inside the egg she reasons must be a new bird capable of saving humanity from the bleak world. This is her hope: salvation. Whether she receives that salvation is left ambiguous. After the boy destroys her egg and its revealed to contain nothing she drowns herself in a river and is then reincarnated as a statue on a floating ship. As it takes flight the boy stands lonely on the shore wind blowing through his ashen hair a look of sorrow or perhaps doubtfulness on his face. The camera pans out. Slowly his figure grows smaller until we can make out only a silhouette. The camera continues. Now the rocks which stood tall upon the beach are but dark dots on the sand. And finally even the island is obscured as the screen goes black the choir fades out and the credits roll. 900https://i.ur.com/a9jrGF9.png Sources Sren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling. Translated by Alastair Hannay. Quotations from pages 18 14 61. Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin OBrien. Quotations from pages 115 117 119.