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Ghost in the Shell (1995)
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Movie Review by Ezra
April 7th, 2007
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An old review I wrote for a (now defunct) website my friend ran (angelfire.com/film/boomstickreviews/)
From the opening sequence, it is easy to tell that this is one of the most beautiful animated films ever created. Ghost in the Shell is a triumph of dazzling science-fiction and state-of-the-art cyberpunk Anime.
For those intrigued by the story, which involves the beginning of a transient life form of pure information (something more advanced and complex than artificial intelligence), I recommend the manga by Masamune Shirow, on which the film is based. This is a film, like Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, that scratches the surface of a much more complex work. But even this surface is complex and beautiful in its own right.
Like Blade Runner and Akira before it, Ghost in the Shell presents a chilling vision of a cold, mechanized world-of-the-future. In this technologically advanced world, totally "real" humans are something of a rarity; almost everyone has mechanical prosthetics or artificial parts of some kind. Some have had their bodies entirely replaced by cyborg technology (flesh on the outside, machine on the inside). The only humanity left inside these "people" are their "ghosts" ---- like a soul for robots. "Ghosthackers" can then program people to their will.
This is where the plot gets heavy. I recommend seeing Ghost in the Shell (and Akira, too) once for the gorgeous animation, and several times more for the subtle complexities of the impeccable story.
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