Angel's Egg is an experimental ambiental horror film directed by Mamoru Oshii, who is responsible for some masterpieces among animated films, such as Ghost in the Shell, Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade and Patlabor 2. This is his debut film, and it's really influental for his later works, mostly because it touches Christianity as a theme, which is connected to his rejection of it shortly before making this film.
The film starts with a little girl carrying an egg and walking around a dystopian ghost city doing weird stuff, like gathering water in weird-shaped glasses. Then, a white haired man appears, carrying a cross-shaped object. They go together and encounter even more weird stuff, such as shadow people throwing shadow harpoons at shadow fishes (kek), giant crow skeletons and the Tree of Life, then the guy mentions some byblical shit about Noah's Arc, then the girl lays to sleep, the guy breaks her egg with the cross-shaped object, we realise there's nothing inside, she wakes up, sees the egg, cries loudly and throws herself off a cliff. There is also some giant eye ascending out of...something, and at the very end we see the bigger picture: everything was happening on an arc. At first glance, it looks and pretentious, weird and creepy...untill you think about it. Then it becomes beautiful.
So, everyone can agree that the film has no context and that everything mentioned above symbolises something, that the movie is completely in allegory, but the question is: what does it symbolise?
And the answer...there is no answer, there are multiple ones. In fact, every person that watches it and thinks about it has it's own answer, that is based on it's expirience, knowledge, mood etc etc, which is what I was trying to say at the beggining of this review. And we get to the main idea of this film: to represent art in its purest form, because that's what art does. It shapes itself based on how the viewer and the artist feel and how much do they know. In conclusion, the point of this film is to represent art in it's purest form, as an expression of human's emotions and knowledge.
What it also successfully does is theme exploration, and in a very original way. How? We said that there are endless amounts of meanings behind this film, which concludes that it explores an endless amount of themes. It could be about Noah's thoughts and flashbacks while he's waiting for the dove to come back, where the girl is his optimistic side, the egg is his faith, and the dude is his pesimistic side; it could be about the death and the reviving of Christ, where the girl and the egg are his human form, while the boy is his form as a deity; it couldn't be about Christianity at all! It could be a symbolic coming of age story, where the girl is just a girl carrying her child spirit, and how she sees the world around her... The meanings are endless, and so are the themes it explores, as I said earlier. Truly an amazing and original concept.
All of this needs to be shown to a viewer in a specific, misterious and eery way to suceed, which Angel's Egg also does almost flawlessly. The dark and creepy setting, the beautiful architecture, amazingly done, drawings and color manipulation is just...perfect, in a creepy, weird and dark way, which is the best way to present the story of it. The soundtrack is also beautiful. From quiet piano themes, to scary chorus tracks that send shivers down your spine, the soundtrack really adds up to the ambiental horror atmosphere of the film, and it can spook you real good :^). I have to mention how the voice acting, even though minimalistic, is really on point.
So, in conclusion, this film is an original, well constructed, breath-taking piece of art that really deserves more love. My warm recommendation to everyone, even to people who are new to anime, but are really into art, it will surely amaze them.
