Angel's Egg

* This review contains moderate spoilers in the third paragraph and heavy spoilers in the fourth (last) paragraph. Read at your own discretion. * While I don’t consider myself as someone who has many film “hot takes”, I hold one conviction that stands as an absolute truth: Angel’s Egg is perfection in its purest form and exists as one of the greatest films ever made. It is the very definition of the arthouse masterpiece that we as pretentious cinephiles defend with such aching passion, for it abandons the safety of traditional narrative to resemble an abstract canvas where a mere two strokes or a desperate flurry of scribbles capture the totality of a human emotion. The film presents the stirring journey of a girl and her egg through a world where humanity has faded into the twilight and dialogue is rendered obsolete because she has no one left to speak to in the silence. There is no character arc in the traditional sense but rather a beautiful and harrowing distillation of existence that revolves entirely around her desperate footsteps towards an unknown journey. The experience proves confounding yet remains undeniably moving as Mamoru Oshii constructs a world of deep mystery where the humans wander as mere shadows and soldiers of gray uniforms and complexions who barely seem to possess a soul. The landscape stands desolate under the weight of constant floods and crumbling ruins, yet the image of the ancient coelacanth haunts every corner of this reality with a ghostly persistence. These fish appear in the fountains and the stained glass and its shadows upon the very buildings to recall the Ichthus of early Christians and the sacred vow to become fishers of men. In the Bible and in the film, the fish serves as the symbol of God and faith, yet here they are merely architectural ghosts that stand in for the divine figures who are so notably absent from this dying world. The shadowy figures attempt to catch these fish in a desperate and hollow imitation of the biblical call to evangelism yet their nets remain empty because the fish have vanished into time. It is as if Oshii is whispering that the affairs of men have ceased to concern God, and that He is no longer present in the nets we cast into the dark. Yet Angel's Egg asserts with a terrifying and poetic clarity that God exists for the all-seeing eye watches from the dawn and rises again at the end of all things. The male figure observes this ascent and recalls the Noah’s Ark parable that he twists to reveal a God who watches from a distance while his creations suffer in what feels like an eternal punishment. The fish existed in the ancient past and the men hunt their memory as if God has intentionally turned his gaze away from a humanity that no longer knows how to pray. The male character complicates this melancholic narrative by serving as a tragic reflection of Jesus who arrives in one of those inexplicable mechanical tanks to seek the destruction of the girl’s egg. His version of Noah’s Ark reveals a belief that the waters never receded and that God abandoned his creations to the cruelty of the storm, for the world of Angel's Egg is a Noah's Ark that was never unflooded. The storms and the rain are a non-stop lament as soldiers drown in the rising tides and this character looks into the all-seeing eye with the helplessness of a son asking why he has been forsaken by his father. He bears witness to the crushing emptiness of existence only to find himself abandoned in turn by the very creator he represents. The ending is a moment of confounding and fragile power where the girl stands as a heartbreaking model of faith who protects the egg by deceiving her own heart into believing that a new creation lies within. She drinks the water to quench an eternal thirst in a direct reflection of the Bible verse that promises that one who drinks God’s water will never thirst again. Oshii uses her to illustrate the tragedy of blind faith or perhaps the beautiful necessity of it when the egg finally breaks to reveal only nothingness. Her subsequent death transforms into the film’s most profound revelation as it mirrors the sacred scripture of John 12:23-25: “Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life…’” She loses the seed because she loves her life, yet she finds her reward by becoming an idol upon a ship of the faithful who have gone before her. Her death causes the flooding to finally subside for a moment, and the Jesus character looks into the rising eye of God as the camera slowly pulls back to reveal the world as an overturned ark. This incredible visual reveals the heart of Oshii’s inquiry during his own loss of faith and leaves us with the evocative question of whether God has truly forsaken humanity to render us helpless or if we have merely ruined ourselves by disobeying the word of God. Nevertheless, the infinite depth of Angel’s Egg renders it a work of art that touches the soul and stands forever as a monumental achievement in the history of cinema. ** 100 (+10 total score from previous review)** Story & Pacing: 19/20 (+5 from previous score) Characters & Acting: 20/20 (+4 from previous score) Themes: 50/50 (+1 from previous score) Cinematography & Editing: 5/5 Soundtrack & Sound: 5/5 Memorability: 1/1