1995’s Ghost in the Shell was meant to be the Japanese anime that cracked the world market wide open. It didn’t work, but that’s not to say it wasn’t successful in its own way. A slew of sequels, TV shows and eventually a highly contested Hollywood remake followed (on account of Scarlett Johansson playing its lead character), and it was also influential on James Cameron, who namechecked it as a reference for Avatar.
But most of all it was the Wachowskis who came and saw Mamoru Oshii’s movie, then conquered the world with The Matrix, which so obviously lifts from Ghost in the Shell that you can tick off the ideas as they occur. Portals in the neck, digital rain, columns disintegrating under heavy bullet assault to cite just three.
It didn’t quite wow everyday moviegoers though. And that’s because the story is a bit opaque and only really settles into something more digestible well into its second half, when Ghost in the Shell more obviously becomes a good-guy-versus-bad-guy battle for supremacy.
Good girl, rather. This is a movie that flips genders, mixes genders, and eventually launches a philosophical assault on the notion of humanity itself. Can a machine be sentient? Could a computer be given asylum if it asked for it? Does Rene Descartes’ “I think before I am” still work in a world full of machines capable of rationalisation?
The “Ghost” of the title is a nod to Arthur Koestler’s Ghost in the Machine, and it’s the preoccupation of a pair of cops (essentially) who are on a mission to track down a character called the Puppet Master, a terrorist genius who hacks humans for their “ghost” and leaves behind a mere “shell”, or puppet.
Major Motoko Kusanagi and her buddy Batô are a pair of cyborg human/machine hybrids. He has a bit of a thing for her, but never expresses it. She is all ruthless efficiency, the driven lawmaker with a one-track mind and a “hell yeh” attitude to danger.
They are like something that’s been lifted from the UK’s 2000AD magazine (itself heavily manga influenced), then mixed with elements of Blade Runner’s cyborg-hunting Deckard, a pair of tough, merciless but thoughtful characters with a dry, dark sense of humour.
And exquisite tits, in the case of Kusanagi. There are many reasons why young men went a bundle on this movie but Kusanagi’s figure is one of them, a slaved-over collection of idealised curves introduced naked and then frequently disrobed during the movie, often when the plot doesn’t really seem to demand it.
So while Kusanagi and Batô ponder whether “Life,” really is “a node, which is born in the flow of information…” as the Puppet Master puts it in the showdown with the cops that’s been the brewing for the whole movie, you can drink in Kusanagi’s upper body if philosophy isn’t your thing.
In debt to the original manga by Masamune Shirow, the animation generally is superb: a mix of digital and the cel-based, it’s grungy, detailed, with much thought having gone into what a future dystopian city (based on Hong Kong) might look like. Dirt on the walls, greasy stains everywhere, with a refuse truck making a telling contribution to the plot early on.
Oshii’s pace is confident, stately even, and the standout score by Kenji Kawai is too. It opens with a theme that’s a mix of classical Japanese and Bulgarian harmonies, then shifts into a soundtrack of synths and singing bowls. It’s all very ambient, very pretty, and Oshii obviously likes it too – on several occasions he pauses the action for a musical interlude.
This is a movie that becomes more metaphysical and poetic as it advances, but paradoxically more violent too, with an arc from the obscure to the obvious as more and more plot elements are explained. Not unlike The Matrix, in fact.
Also like The Matrix, this is a movie that not only can be watched more than once, but will (probably – I’m guessing, I’ve only seen it the once) be more enjoyable second or third time round, when world-building has been teased apart from plot set-up, character rendition and philosophical framework. A Ghost well worth meeting.
Ghost in the Shell – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
