Ghost in the Shell

The anime, which I've loved for a long time, is taut but very dense, and it's difficult to appreciate all its details just in one sitting. That said, its basic theme is easy enough to glean from the title, a riff on the idea of the ghost in the machine, the inner enlivening spirit which separates man from the rest of the mechanical universe. When our cyborg hero, Major Kusanagi, is confronted by an A.I. (the "Puppet Master") who declares itself to be a sentient, rights-bearing life-form, she starts to wonder whether she is any different for having a few brain cells remaining in her cortex. She asks Batou whether she is human simply because of the way she is treated: a social convention that the Puppet Master will undermine.

The manga, which I've read only recently, includes a notes section at the back where the author not only gives background, but explains the ground, since the plotting is even more tangled and inscrutable than in the film. Masamune Shirow is a very frustrating guide to his own creation, coming across as an excitable autodidact who mashes and remixes a heap of memes, but who's ability to synthesise and explain his arguments has gone AWOL. Part of the problem may be that he lives in his world so deeply that he assumes the reader already understands most of it. The notes are fascinating nonetheless, particularly when they leave behind all the talk of "ordinance and equipment" and start to cover the concept of ghosts and the influence of religion on his work:

"I think all things in nature have "ghosts". This is a form of pantheism, and similar to ideas found in Shinto or among believers in the Manitou. Because of the complexity and function, and the physical constraints they have when they appear as a physical phenomenon, it may be impossible to scientifically prove this. There are, after all, humans who act more like robots than robots, and no one can say for certain that they have no ghosts just because they don't act like it. In ancient times, neither air nor the universe were believed to exist."

I've included wikipedia links in the above, and only a brief scan will confirm that these are vastly different traditions Shirow is referencing here. What's clear is that he believes in a kind of cosmic ordering in which spirits can influence our lives. This carries over into the anime: the Major sometimes hears "whispers" in her ghost, a preternatural intuition that tells her which car to tail, for example. All humans have a "ghost line", a baseline piece of information or energy you can "dive" into (read) or hack (write), which separates them from other pieces of software.

The thing about pantheism is that when you push it out enough it starts to look like atheism. Shirow's manga is suffused with his idiosyncratic musings on the way technology and the world of the spirit intermingle, but his inclusion of the idea of a machine that can generate its own ghost introduces a destabalising element to the cosmic order: where do you find Cartesian dualism if everything has its very own ghost, including our computers? Do we not then jettison the spirit world altogether for the sake of simplicity? Shirow is too wedded to his systems and phases to accept this, and he continues to believe in channelers and psychics. The anime, however, is more ambiguous, which is partly why it is one of the rare cases where an adaptation improves on the original.

The actual title of the manga translates as Mobile Armored Riot Police, and the philosophical stuff is definitely a side-order to the main course of running, jumping, shooting and intrigue. The anime chooses the subtitle of the manga as its title, and flips the focus onto the existential crisis of its hero. Its pacing is deliberately slow-fast: kinetic pieces of action are followed by languorous sequences where the Major dreams of her robotic rebirth and then relives that dream by floating on the ocean. The Puppet Master chooses her as his mate because they are alike. "He" is a program used for corporate espionage trying to escape his masters. She is an assassin who's body and soul is owned by the corporation that made it (one that dictates she has to be naked in order for her invisibility to function). In the middle of the film there is an at-first bewilderingly long set-piece where she wanders New Port City, soundtracked by a Japanese choir (borrowing the harrowing vocal tones of Bulgarian folk music). The metropolitan anomie is given a cybernetic gloss as the sequence ends on a shot of shop window mannequins. Kusanagi dreams of a new life beyond the borders of this one, just as the Puppet Master desires a life beyond the networks he traverses.

At the beginning of the film, Kusanagi explains the dangers of specialisation to a new recruit, saying that unpredictability and adaptation are necessary to make the unit stronger. The Puppet Master uses the same arguments at the end to convince Kusanagi into a sexual (in the biological sense) union. Rather than living forever and reproducing endless copies of himself, he desires a dynamic system where death and difference is the norm. The film overlays this fusion with sexual, violent and religious imagery. Sex inevitably entails death, as it is the activity that allows for our replacement. Just before the union is complete, Kusanagi witnesses an angel descending over her, blessing the new bond. The sense is that they have both transitioned into a higher order system, that much closer to the gods. But it is just as easy to read this as the machine not only generating its own ghost, but a sense of the numinous humans have evolved with.

That final showdown between the Major and the tank is not set to a thumping techno soundtrack. Instead, it speeds up the juxtaposition of kinetic and meditative scenes running through the film, and overlays it with mellow flute washes evoking the immemorial past. It is a samurai duel in the 21st century, set against the backdrop of a phylogenetic tree of life, shot to pieces by modern machinery. The symbolic richness on display is characteristic of the film, in which every element – the voice in the lake, the three different cases (which are three different chapters in the manga) – is weaved together in ways only multiple viewings can unravel. That mixture of depth and directness is what makes it a great film.

The Little Norse Prince

When I borrowed this DVD, I didn't realise just how old the film is. It's part of the Studio Ghibli Collection, but it was made before the Studio even existed, all the way back in 1968. Miyazaki was an animator, and it's the debut feature by Isao Takahata, who went on to direct the seminal Grave of the Fireflies. While The Little Norse Prince is a kids film, with lots of cute talking animals and songs, some of the social and political concerns of Takahata's later work can be found here in embryonic form. Most notably, the emphasis placed early and often on the importance of the community acting as a single force against external enemies. Grunwald, the sorcerer villain, has wolves, owls and sea-monsters as his servants, and can represent both a manifestation of the malevolence of the natural world and the individualistic domination of it by arrogant humans. He offers eternal life to chosen 'siblings', but this comes at the expense of the humanity held in common with your fellow man. Hilda professes to be alone but not lonely, but becomes bitterly conflicted when observing the wedding rituals of the community. The film even includes a subtle suggestion of sexual frustration and jealousy in the character, when the other women laugh at her because she doesn't know how to use a "needle". Our straight-laced hero Hols doesn't always stick to the script – going off to confront the Big Bad on his own. But these forays are not conclusively successful. Only when he unites the village around him does he prevail against Grunwald. His "Sword of the Sun" is pulled out of a stone – he is a king-in-training who unifies and focuses the general will. The parallel with the constitutional role of the Japanese Emperor is all too apparent.

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Elevation without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure." - T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night

Herzog's Dracula is interesting for a number of reasons. First and most importantly, he is played by Klaus Kinski, who brings his unique combination of spellbinding charisma and sense of the ridiculous to the role. At one point Herzog has him running across an empty town square at night, revelling in the disease and confusion he has introduced into the community. Herzog also makes Kinski carry his own coffins into his ruined castle (no removal van for him), tip-toeing around like a pantomime villain. But he isn't a safe, fun figure, Kinski's commanding presence shines through the heavy make-up. His first confrontation with Harker is edge-of-the-seat stuff.

This mix is all to Herzog's purpose, as his Dracula is more anti-heroic than the all-powerful fiend in the original novel. Herzog is interested in the toll immortality has exerted. It's a "curse". The Count establishes his belligerence in his first conversation with Harker, empathising with the soul of the wolf hunting his prey. But before he signs the contract for his new house, he talks about no longer enjoying the pleasures of youth: fountains and daylight. Living for countless centuries has made him a shadowy, lonely figure.

The familiar theme of aristocratic corruption is touched on. The vampire in his castle is literally sucking the life blood of the peasant population around him. The struggle between reason and superstition also features. Van Helsing, the man with the plan in Stoker's novel, is a neutered figure in Herzog's film. Rather Lucy, who is the victim in the novel, emerges as the preternaturally aware, self-sacrificing saviour. Lucy, played by the luminous Isabelle Adjani, maintains that human beings act on belief rather than reason. Great deeds are often (terminally) foolish. Crosses and superstitions work as wards against nightly terrors. The Count obviously believes in, and is affected by, them.

Adjani is also the only one able to stand up to Kinski directly, calling out his thirst not for sex and violence but for love, the kind not even a god can destroy. Nosferatu's famous shadow creeps over the family home. He peers through the window like the beggar at Christmas. Adjani ensnares Kinski not by seducing him, but by mothering him. Kinski gives suck like a monstrous baby in his final scene. The lone wolf, the predator, just wants to be human.

However, when Harker is revealed as a vampire at the end of the film, he doesn't heed Dracula's lesson. Instead, he grins at the possibilities living death can provide to experience the world to the full. Dracula himself chose to reside in impossibly inhospitable but awesomely beautiful mountains, learning to appreciate the silence of the natural world. Harker rides out seeking the same supra-human vistas, forgetting that he, in time, will also be reduced to the second childishness that finally ruined Dracula.

Just worth noting that allegations have been made about animal cruelty during the making of this film. None of it is clear from the images in the film itself, but it's something that patrons of Herzog should be aware of. Having seen Aguirre, the Wrath of God and imagining the insanely dangerous shoot it must have been (those horses on those leaky rafts...), I'm not entirely surprised Herzog is less than professional in these matters. The man's a genius, but he deserves censure for that.

Sandcastle

The artist of this French comic gives a good interview here, talking about the Twilight Zone / "cruel fairy tale" nature of the story and how the comic form allows you to represent sped-up time better than films (which require naturalism-undermining CGI) or prose (where the pacing is slower). Should be said that the artistic challenge of drawing rapidly-ageing bodies is met pretty well, although I didn't always like the cartoony artwork, which over-emphasised facial features in order to make the characters clearly distinguishable.

The interview didn't touch on the rather interesting cold open the story has: an aerial shot of the costal landscape, plunging deep into the sea water, through an underwater cave and up to reveal a placid shore. In a way quite cinematic, in that it's very much about the movement of "the camera". But if it's true that CGI is an imposition on live-action, then the effect would be (slightly) different if it was on film. I suspect CGI may be good (and ubiquitous) enough for audiences to not experience it as an imposition if it appeared in an otherwise quite naturalistic setting. But if I'm wrong, comics still do have a niche to fill in this area.

More interesting than that is the symbolism which accompanies the introduction to the geography of the story, particularly the underwater cave section where the reader undergoes a kind of birth: through the watery hole and up for air, the path of life stretching away on the shore. This is followed by a sequence in which a mysterious man on the cliffs notices a woman on the beach taking off her clothes and jumping into the sea: a kind of sexual awakening metaphor. He walks away, but the final sequence is of him turning back to see her floating on the seawater, and then looking down in resignation. Later we learn that the woman is dead. So we go through a kind of birth-life-death cycle right at the beginning of the story. The silence of the images also establishes the right eerie tone, setting up a nice contrast with the buzzing activity of the arriving holiday-makers who are thrown into this creepy setting and situation.

The mystery is never explained, although a science fiction author advances a couple of theories. It's a fable – something underlined by the bedtime story told at the end about a king who builds a fortress against death which only serves to cut him off from his family. A link is drawn with the obsessive sandcastle-building the doctor succumbs to. He forgets wife and children in the pursuit of transient and ephemeral life projects. However, some projects are more ephemeral than others. The bedtime story includes the king looking over to a distant mountain and realising that he has never touched a snowflake. Similarly, one of the children regrets that he did not try to escape by climbing the cliffs when he was younger and healthier. I think the creators are trying to valorise projects which seek an understanding of and settlement with the natural world. But this is motivated by the same impulses as the need to build castles of sand (those unphilosophical castles in the air castigated by the Scottish Enlightenment), a body of knowledge not secured to and tested by the experience of nature. The final scene is of the surviving member of the group tapping out the beginnings of another sandcastle – obviously not learning the mistakes of his forebears.

Grave of the Fireflies

I had been forewarned that this was not only a brilliant WW2 film but a guaranteed tear-jerker, so I watched it with a guarded attitude, not wanting to give in to whatever emotional manipulation was in store. I'm quite glad I did, because while the film does not manipulate you and I was locked out of sharing the intense impact it has on others, another aspect does open up when you approach it in this way.

The firefly metaphor can't help but encourage readings of the film as a critique of the senseless destruction of war. The fireflies represent the people caught up in the war, and more broadly of the brief lives we all lead, and the fate we all share. In one scene, they remind the protagonist of watching a naval parade, and all the proud, patriotic and violent feelings the spectacle stirred within him. He sits up shooting an imaginary machine gun at the air, but the night is peaceful, underlining the embarrassing nature of the outburst.

But there is more buried under this rather unsubtle metaphor. For one, the director has made explicitly clear that the film does not contain a pacifist message. Instead, he draws attention to how the brother and sister fail to survive because of their decision to isolate themselves from kith and kin. This is a difficult perspective to get because we are so invested in Seita and Setsuko's story and their aunt really is mean and conniving. Nonetheless, it is inescapably true that their decision to live apart and alone dooms them both in the end. Independence and individualism is seductive but dangerous. When the film mourns the death of Setsuko, we don't look back to her life before the film starts. We only get images of her playing in the cave – when she was most free, but also when she was most vulnerable.

The end of the film shows the ghosts of Seita and Setsuko looking over a city, an effect Scorsese pinched for his Gangs of New York. Japan's current prosperity is built over the suffering of the generation that experienced the war, and Isao Takanaka may have intended the shot to be a pointed reminder of that fact. If so, the siblings emerge as more noble than the decadent present generation, but they have also made the same mistake – succumbing to a very modern individualist ideal and rejecting the ties that bind a community together.

Ghost World

The most recent convocation of the Islington Comics Forum (a local institution where I now get my words + pictures from) had this on the agenda, and there was just too little time to dig into one of the central questions posed by the book, which is why in the seven hells is it called Ghost World? The phrase is graffitied everywhere around the unnamed town the characters inhabit, and one semi-official explanation is that it refers to "the fact that the town's individuality is being encroached upon by franchises that are seen everywhere". But what about that sequence at the very end of the book, when Enid comes across the mysterious artist responsible for the graffiti? What's THAT about?

Earlier in the book, Enid is excited about meeting "David Clowes" – a stand in for the author of her comic – at a signing. The guy turns out to be a creep, and Clowes may be aiming this episode at writers unselfconciously creating their very own fantasy girlfriends in their work. Clowes is not doing that, and I learn just now that Enid Coleslaw is actually an anagram for Daniel Clowes, which further underlines his determination to keep his protagonist very close, not letting any 'other-ing' distort his account.

That piece of meta prepares us for Enid's second encounter with a manifestation of her author. Because that is who I believe the guy with the paint can and brush leaving all those "Ghost World"s is. Clowes is literally branding his creation, imposing a unifying metaphor over it. But as his central character approaches for answers, he literally runs away from providing any. In that scene, he divests himself of the responsibility of giving a moral to his tale, or a direction for Enid. The book ends on the exactly the opposite of a deus ex machina – God isn't revealed in the machine, He leaves it.

The Seventh Seal

Bergman says the knight and squire in the film manifest two attitudes to faith that wrestled within him at the time of making – a remnant of naïve piety and his adult cold rationality. He allows these two to lay out their stalls without conflict, they mostly stay out of each others way. The squire's (very Shakespearian) skepticism is immediate and winning, although the horrors of the medieval world make Gunnar Björnstrand rather bitter: he's more Jaques than Touchstone. Max Von Sydow gives a very intense performance, eyes always trying to pierce the inner significance of things. God's silence is not so much a source of desolation as of frustration. WHY doesn't he answer? And more importantly, if he doesn't exist WHY are we constantly plagued with the idea of his perfection? At the end, his squire says he could have offered his master medicine that would have quenched this thirst. We can live content without the dissatisfaction of forever being separated from the divine, although the knight does not have the opportunity to learn how to do this. Death (or the plague) claims them all.

Well, almost all. The existential musings of the knight and squire is contrasted with what Bergman describes as the holy within humanity, portrayed by a "holy family" of itinerant actors. The father even expresses the hope of his young son being able to work miracles, although only for entertainment purposes. Their act aims to distract and amuse an audience in a village, but their efforts are quashed when a procession of self-flagellating divines interrupt proceedings and whip up the crowd with visions of impending apocalypse. Bergman says the mural-painter in the church is a stand-in for his own attitude to art, in that you make what you are paid for. But the character also talks about how the image of death is far more potent and captivating that that of a bawd. In the middle of the film, the "holy family"supply an alternative sacrament to the company – wild strawberries and milk – much sweeter than the Christian fare. It offers a moment of peace for the knight, but he is drawn back to his game with Death. Distraction for him is momentary, the struggle for answers continues unabated.

Distant Voices, Still Lives

Character and plot are largely dispensed with in this film. What you get instead is the evocation of a time and place through images and songs. I'm amazed it was ever made – a film built entirely on the film-maker's personal memories of growing up in Liverpool in the 1940s and 50s. And they are very obviously memories. Many shots are composed like photographs, the family sitting still waiting for the shutter. The camera moves only very slowly and determinedly, sometimes literally shifting the audience from one scene to the next. One great example is the pan down the street into darkness that arrives at the family praying at an indoor shrine surrounded by candles. Immersion is resisted at every point. We drift through the world the film sets before us, but we are never part of it.

Pete Postlethwaite's violence is introduced early. Terrence Davies knows to put the most shocking scene at the beginning so we know exactly what's going on and how bad it is. But explanation or insight is avoided: what does a child understand of the roots of evil? This is a time when such behaviour remained unquestioned and accepted as part of the fabric of reality. Revolt and rebuke, when it arrives at the end of the film, is quickly shut down (although the daughter's forwardness contrasts with the mother's silence, and is a sign of things to come).

Although dissent is repressed, the community finds its voice in song. The film is full of them. People sing at weddings or when the bombs are falling, happy or sad or bored. At the end of the film we see the crowd of unbrellas outside a cinema, and the crowded screening inside. In another scene, someone shouts for a record to be put on to cheer everyone up. One of the themes of the film seems to be the cultural revolution brought about by the recording of sound and moving image. One scene that particularly struck me is the babysitter waiting outside an open door to be invited in – she starts singing to herself, and ends up doing a little dance in the doorway. What would I do in her situation now? Probably twiddle with my MP3 player whilst flicking through twitter. Boredom having been comprehensively annihilated, we've almost forgotten what it was like when you had to make your own fun. This film serves as a museum exhibit for a lost culture before recording and storing entertainment was possible.

Why Distant Voices, Still Lives? The film is composed of two sections shot two years apart. And while inter-titles come up to introduce the first as Distant Voices and the second as Still Lives, the film appears to me to be a unified whole: voices and stills – songs and images – from (a personal) history recreated and frozen in amber. The distance is that of memory, in which human lives are preserved unchanging. Davies is using the instruments that destroyed the customs and community of his youth to document it, and I suspect the title is drawing attention to this central irony.