Ghost in the Shell (1995, Mamoru Oshii) (Patreon)

55/100

Can't remember why I didn't watch this prior to seeing Innocence (which I did not like at all, rating 39) at Cannes '04—maybe it wasn't readily available then, or I meant to but ran out of time. It was never a priority otherwise because sci-fi anime isn't really my thing, and as usual I found my cerebral cortex glazing over whenever the characters start spouting gobbledygook about e.g. how a cyborg and a sentient computer program can merge and produce offspring on the internet. Might not have that exactly right but it's something abstractly and to me stultifyingly techno-theoretical along those lines. Also standard was my frustration with the genre's budget-dictated shortcuts, like mouths that robotically (ha!) open and close sans any relationship to even the most basic human lip movements. (Honestly, Muppets are way more expressive. And yes, of course I watched the subtitled version; that's not the issue.) And yet! Whenever Ghost in the Shell shuts up and foregrounds its astonishing backgrounds, it's legitimately awe-inspiring. At one point, Oshii unexpectedly, and for no particular reason that I can discern but who cares, stops the movie cold to conduct a city-symphony-style tour of its primary locale, accompanied by Kenji Kawai's magnificent, percussion-heavy score (which I will now look into purchasing). You could excise that sequence without harming the narrative in any way, I'm pretty sure, but that would verge on desecration. Pure action's also generally quite strong, with the early chase involving the hacked garbageman a thrilling highlight. Whole lotta weird sexualizing of the female lead going on (can't imagine that carried over into the Scarlett Johansson remake); if the film was supposed to make me horny, it failed, and if it's trying to do something else with all those ginormous nude hooters, I'm at a loss regarding what that might be. Overall, a decidedly mixed bag, and still not really my thing, but this is perhaps as close as I've yet come to understanding its widespread appeal.