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| SOUL SURVIVORS
ghost in the shell 2: innocence
The first Japanese anime film ever to screen in competition
at Cannes, Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence,
is not really a sequel to the original cult movie: it is, says
Sam Connolly, a mind-bending metaphysical essay taking
the director’s signature world of humans,
cyborgs and dolls one huge step further.
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Just under five years ago, Bandai, Japan’s largest toy manufacturer, produced a talking doll called Primopuel. It had its own moods, was frequently irritating and could be just as demanding as a toddler. The doll - which cost upwards of $60 - was not targeted at children, but at adults. “The number of purely child-oriented dolls is on the decline,” commented a company spokesman, “but dolls aimed at adults are becoming popular.”
If you doubt the premise on which Japanese anime director Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell films are based, you need look no further than Primopuel (the name is apparently based on the Italian words for ‘first’ and ‘boy’), whose target market is lonely middle-aged couples and single people.
“We all need friends, family, and lovers,” says Oshii, by way of explaining the thinking behind Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. “We can’t live alone. In the year 2032, when this movie takes place, robots and electronic beings have become necessary companions to people. Actually, that time has come already.”
Produced by Production I.G., the company set up in 1987 by Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (who produced Innocence) and Takayuki Goto, Innocence was made in conjunction with Studio Ghibli, the outfit behind such record-breaking animated features as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away (which won the Golden Bear in Berlin last year). And, while it is not the first animated film to be selected for Competition in Cannes (indeed, it is not even the only animated film in Competition this year, as a glance at page 16 will confirm), it is certainly the first ‘anime’ film to be so honoured. Not that Oshii himself (who will be 53 in August) seems especially delighted by the honour. He hates travel and hates putting on a dinner jacket even more. But, he says, “it is part of my job as a director, so I will go”.
Innocence - which was released in Japan with the word in English as its sole title - follows on from Oshii’s first Ghost in the Shell (1995), a hallucinatory masterpiece that received a lukewarm reception in Japan but was a major hit elsewhere in the world (it topped Billboard’s video charts in the US). That film had an enormous impact on other film-makers (the opening credits of the Matrix movies, for instance, are inspired by - not to say directly copied from - the credits of Oshii’s first Ghost movie).
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