'The Sky Crawlers' is pure painful atmosphere

18.08.2008 by Patrick W. Galbraith

With the incredible build up to "Ghost in the Shell 2.0" and "The Sky Crawlers," some are calling this the summer of Oshii Mamoru, who seems to be the only director capable of going head to head with Miyazaki Hayao and the Pokemon juggernaut at the box office. Both of the intellectual film maker's works are receiving mixed reviews, but those interested in his unique atmospheric touch and surreal narrative approach are strongly encouraged to consider "The Sky Crawlers."

Based on the book series by acclaimed mystery writer and researcher Mori Hiroshi, "Sky Crawlers" is set in the near future and focuses on the life of a fighter plane pilot. While the wider setting of the story is a brutal war, there is absolutely no explanation of the political or social reasons for the conflict. As details are teased out, it becomes apparent that two rival companies are in a competition to make fighter planes, but the deaths of major characters in the story only amplifies the superficiality of this reason. There is no beginning to the conflict, no middle and no apparent end. As the author says, "You can just pick it up and read it from anywhere." The characters are simply crawling slowly across an endless sky.

Oshii's two-hour film digest follows much the same confounding logic. It begins with a gripping dogfight scene of a terrified pilot being shot down by an incredibly skilled enemy in a plane marked with a black panther insignia. The shower of empty bullet casings raining down is beautifully rendered. This death casts a long shadow over the remainder of the film, and everything comes back to this key incident. Soon after, an androgynous child-like pilot arrives at a remote base as the replacement for a dead man, who the viewer assumes to be the downed man from the opening. The replacement Yuichi is "kirudore," a group of engineered humans that do not age out of the heightened reflexes and apathy of junior high school and so are used as "ideal" soldiers. They live forever until they are shot down in battles in the sky. For some reason, Yuichi is made to use the same plane as the dead man (apparently not him in the opening...), becomes close with the dead man's friends and his matronly prostitute lover. He is absolutely oblivious to how messed up this is, as one of the reasons he and other pilots are able to remain children is they do not think beyond the moment.

After starting up a relationship with the doll-like Kusanagi, the captain of the base whose name and character design resemble the Major from Oshii's "Ghost in the Shell," Yuichi comes to find out that she killed the pilot of his plane, and that is why the machine is undamaged. He was her lover, and she wanted to free him from the endless cycle of meaningless battle. The man in the panther plane (from the opening sequence) was also her lover from back in her ace pilot days, but he did not want to be a child anymore and so moved to the other company to become an "adult man." Late one night in an office rendezvous, Kusanagi begs the child pilot Yuichi to "kill me this time," but he refuses in one of the highlight moments of the movie. This is the only time Kusanagi shows emotion in the film, and the powerful scene is all the more heartbreaking given what is to come. Soon after, Yuichi flies out to challenge the panther, and this is revealed to be a form of suicide as this "adult man" is like a secret boss in a videogame and is utterly undefeatable. Yuichi's blithe attitude, determination to end this cycle and awakening emotions for Kusanagi all are squandered in a meaningless death. The panther riddles him so full of lead that even the cockpit windshield is soaked with blood from hits on his body. The child is shot down and dies. The movie ends with the base's basset hound mascot and Kusangi's daughter, from the first dead man and adopted by his now deceased child replacement Yuichi, waiting on the runway for a sign. The sky does not change, and they walk away. Soon after another replacement pilot arrives from the horizon and the film ends.

The beauty of the story is surely not the story, which is depressing to the point of encouraging suicidal tendencies in the audience that match those of the characters, but rather Oshii's touch. Gone is the pompous theoretical posturing of "Innocence," back is the trance-like combination of ambient sounds by Kawai Kenji and incredible digital-cel imagery by Production I.G. For example, the scene of the kirudore group flying by night to the staging grounds of a mass offensive is completely silent, carried only by scenery, music and the vague sense of urgency written on faces bathed in the glow of green flight dials. Dialogue is sparse, mostly just repetitious greetings and sentence fragments. Oshii adopts Mori's Japan Industrial Standard jargon (long sounds are clipped, as in the Japanese "computaa" for "computer" being shortened to "computa"), which is rewarding and authentic given the setting and source material, but also weird. Pilots speak English while in flight, adding another layer of complexity and alienation. This in combination with the lack of narrative and the fragmentary timeline - indeed, it seems to be Yuichi who was shot down by the panther in the opening scene, though the exact details do not match - creates a surreal setting and oppressive atmosphere that reminds the viewer of "Ghost in the Shell" in 1995. Oshii is a master of the repeated image or line of music and dialogue, and it accumlates meaning and gains momemtum with each iteration. Each time is the same, but just a little off, a terrifying semi-deja vu. The world warps with his masterful camerawork and off-beat editing techniques, making the setting and narrative on the ground seem unbearably oppressive, in sharp contrast to the clear blue skies where pilots go to die.

Aside from the critique implicit in a European "country that looks like Japan" breeding eternal children who endlessly fight in game-like surreal without purpose or meaning, there is really nothing of Oshii's recent rash of social commentary. It might be easier for the viewer if he did try to rationalize it. The children are born again and again, they fly again and again, they love again and again, and it seems to go nowhere. Were this a Buddhist lecture it might be easier to swallow, but as an anime it is truly a heart-wrenching thing to see Kusanagi waiting for "Yuichi" to return yet again in another form so the whole tragedy can repeat itself. Likewise, Oshii uses this anime tour-de-force to once again tell his story of isolation, unending adolescence, meaningless social struggle and the human condition. The inclusion of the emotional basset hound, dollish Kusanagi and vague references to "Jin-roh" and the Japanese student protests makes this seem like Oshii himself is just repeating endlessly his own glory and disappointment.