Angel's Egg - A Puzzling Masterpiece from the Director of Ghost in the Shell

when I've researched experimental art I've noticed that sometimes artists will Proclaim that they don't know what their art means the insinuation is that what you see on the canvas or on the screen is a spontaneous eruption from their unconscious mind I have no doubt that in some cases artists do exactly this but with the artists I have come across namely the ones I have discussed on this channel they all seem to be lying take for instance the movie Mulholland Drive David Lynch's filmmaking Masterpiece he proclaims that he doesn't know what is inside the mysterious blue box in that movie yet the clues he has given to help us understand the movie suggest otherwise how about hideakiano and Neon Genesis Evangelion he claims that the religious symbolism in that anime series and in the end of Evangelion movie don't actually mean anything and are there purely for aesthetic but then the expanded lore says that the symbolism is intrinsic to the plot regardless this begs the question is there a movie where its creator makes a credible claim that they don't know what it means of the movies I've watched in my life I am only aware of one that might come close Angel's egg I only became aware of this movie three years ago it was after I had completed an analysis video on a movie called Ghost in the Shell in the comments section for that video people asked me to look into other movies made by the director of Ghost in the Shell mamorooshi of course the number one recommendation was Angel's egg oh she like Lynch and Anno said that he has no idea what Angel's egg means but is that true while I think it's clear that the film is a beautiful if Bleak meditation on the loss of faith in a higher deity it's unclear if that meditation has any conclusion or Insight this is why I say angel zag might be a true stream of Consciousness film or stream of unconsciousness rather the movie is like a dream filled with symbols that suggest an Ever elusive underlying meaning maybe Angel psych has a canonical meaning but like with most dreams I thought for a time that that meaning was lost in the pervasive darkness of mamaro oshi's unconscious mind I wanted to do a video on Angel's egg about three years ago but I had to put it out of my mind because I just didn't know what to make of it but over the last few weeks I was suddenly reminded of it once again my analysis of Ghost in the Shell 2 got picked up by the YouTube algorithm and all of a sudden people were once again requesting a video on Angel's egg though I was reluctant at first I convinced myself to watch the movie again if only to re-experience the film's unique Melancholy visuals and dispiriting atmosphere long story short I was able to come up with maybe not an explanation but a cohesive interpretation it wasn't without great difficulty though of all the explanations I've tried to provide a piece of art this one doesn't have the universality that I tried to aim for with other videos simply because the film structure seems to follow the stream of Consciousness model nonetheless I think you will find my interpretation satisfying quickly before I begin my analysis if you haven't watched this movie and would like to before you hear an explanation for it you can watch it on YouTube it's very short less than 70 minutes long and it is well worth your time I will link to it in the description box below the biggest clue that we can draw upon when trying to understand this film is mamoto oshi's State of Mind when he was making it every analysis of this film that I've seen draws upon this one article from senseofcinema.com which tells us that prior to making the film oh she was a Christian so much a Christian that at one point he considered entering a seminary however he lost his faith shortly before Angel's egg went into production it is crystal clear to me that the existential desperation caused by the collapse of one's belief system motivated every aspect of this film from the dark lifeless aesthetic to the aimless wandering of its two main characters make no mistake the belief system that this film's world is predicated on is Christianity and there are several clues for this the biggest and most obvious of which is when the nameless male lead retells the biblical story of Noah's Ark in that story God wanted to flood the world because he regretted creating Humanity on account of their sinful nature however there was one man named Noah that God wished to protect on account of his goodness God instructed Noah and his family to build an ark large enough to protect not only him and his family but two of every kind of animal so they may procreate and repopulate the World After the flood after 40 days and 40 nights of rain and another long period of waiting after that Noah sent out a bird to see if the water had receded and thankfully The Bird returned with an olive leaf in its mouth thus Noah and his family were saved and they repopulated the world there is one major difference between the biblical story and the nameless man's account in his story The Bird never returns years pass and and Noah and his family begin to forget why the Earth was flooded or what the purpose of the Ark was they and all the animals then turned to stone as a former Christian I initially wondered why this change in this story was made did the man forget the original story did he change it to reflect his crestfallen attitude the truth seems to be much darker I wasn't paying close enough attention when I watched this film the first time but it seems that when the man is telling this story to the girl he is telling it to her inside Noah's actual Arc the stone skeletons of various animals on the walls plus two shots of a giant Ark from the outside give Credence to this view what this suggests is that in the world of Angel's egg God flooded the world but the waters never receded maybe God forgot about Humanity or maybe God just didn't fulfill his initial promise to restore the world whatever the case may be the answer will forever elude those who ponder it though the man seems to have given up hope in receiving any answers there are those that will continue to seek them out in one of the most striking scenes in the movie we see a series of stone men come to life when Shadows of fish appear on the walls of the city they take harpoons and try to nail down the Shadows but they fail in their attempts destroying the city's architecture instead now some have said that this scene is a reference to a statement made by Jesus in the Bible and that he would make his disciples Fishers of Men meaning they would make converts while I think this interpretation is on the right track I don't think the conclusion is accurate after all why are the fishermen fishing for fish and not men instead I argue that the shadow of the fish represents Jesus himself there are a few pieces of evidence for this one is the stained glass silhouette of the fish that we see in the church suggests thing that the fish represents God and the stone men worshiped it at one point also one of the most famous symbols for Jesus is a fish in Roman times Christians were persecuted for their faith but they signaled to fellow Believers by wearing the symbol of the fish on their person that fish represented Christ because it represented the ichthys fish and in an ancient Greek the name ichthys served as an acronym for the following Jesus Christ God's son Our Savior now if the film is about a loss in faith it makes sense that the fish would show up as shadows as empty illusions that can't be caught the stone men pursue the fish but instead of learning the right lesson that their God isn't there their blind zealotry leads to the destruction of the world around them a fact that is so often the case in the history of many religions still it's somewhat understandable for many people it is easier to lash out in violence than to admit that the thing you based your entire life on was an illusion this conundrum of course is best personified in the nameless female protagonist this might just be the psychoanalyst side of me but anytime this girl is on screen she is either in or interacts with various symbols of the unconscious mind the Dark Forest the omnipresent Shadows but the most important one that most analysts seem to overlook is water water particularly in the form of the sea represents the unconscious mind because we do not know what Horrors lie beneath the dark depths unless we search for it for ourselves for much of the film The Girl is around water she will drink the water which is symbolic of maintaining her unconscious naivety she will look at the water but never go in it and the one time that she does it's obvious that she's in a dream like State one that she's broken out of when an undesirable scary noise comes out of nowhere and of course the greatest symbol of her unconsciousness is the titular Angel's egg as we learn in the film she carries this egg around in the hopes that it will produce a bird that will replace the one that never returned to Noah one that will find dry land and allow them to leave their God forsaken world but is there something in the egg this is kind of a tricky question to answer on the one hand the film heavily implies that when the man breaks her egg to try and break the girl out of her unconscious State there was nothing inside however at the end of the film we see numerous eggs across the landscape with at least one of them holding a bird inside of it so why the difference how do we know those eggs with the birds in them are real and not just a part of a dream like the dream of the bird that the man said he had which we see in the first shot of the movie or even better maybe the whole world in the movie is as the nameless man says inside the dream of a God that abandoned them alas we come to the part of the movie that gives credibility to oshi's original assertion that he has no idea what it means the best I figured I could do to try and answer these questions is in my opinion take a Freudian dream analysis kind of approach we will look at the various symbols and try to produce a logical consistent conclusion so after the man breaks the girl's egg she chases after him only to accidentally fall into a pool of water as she falls into the depths below she encounters an older version of herself in the darkness she then merges with the older self in a way that mirrors the following image from the Ghost in the Shell movie to me the merging in both movies symbolizes a desire to evolve into the highest form of one's consciousness of one's being the older version of the girl rising from the unconscious steps and merging with the younger version represents the attainment of that higher State the symbolism is very jungian in a way in that the older version of the girl represents Young's concept of the self the Pinnacle of one's development rising out of the unconscious depths if you want a further explanation for that concept and how it applies to Angel's egg please refer to the description box then when the girl finally dies bubbles float up from her body and turn into eggs which rest on the surface of the water above at the end of the movie we see a statue of the girl manifest on the Giant Eye which is heavily implied to be God one of many reasons being that the other statues surrounding the girl are holding their hands in prayer and have Halos around their head signifying a heavenly host of angels for being faithful God rewards the girl with the highest form of herself just as motoko kusunagi was rewarded with a Divine state of being when she merged at the end of the Ghost in the Shell movie to some this seems like an honoration for the faithful those who do not see yet believe will be assimilated into God's being and to live eternal life though the egg the girl carried contained nothing her faith was rewarded with multiple eggs that did contain something interestingly I agree with most of this interpretation save for one element I don't think this is an exoneration of the faithful even if it is it's not clear to me that this is what one should want remember this movie was made when Oshi lost faith in Christianity so for him to make a movie exonerating faith in God would be peculiar to say the least if this movie exonerates anything it's The Human Condition and how there's an element to The Human Condition that possesses a Keener light than maybe that of God the nameless man represents this in the most beautifully subtle way there are a couple of interpretations for who this man is is in what he represents one is that he represents Jesus himself this is not just because he carries the cross around but because he has bandages over his hands covering the area where Jesus had Nails driven into them when he was crucified another possibility is that he represents mamono Oshi himself and his depleting desire to be a Christian regardless if the man represents Jesus or the crestfallen Christian Oshi their existence in the movie begs the same question what would it be like to be Jesus or a Christian in a world seemingly abandoned by God even if one's faith is Vindicated in death like the girls is one not allowed to question why Blind Faith is the solution what about the state of the world why did God not hold up his end of the bargain with Noah is it not right for the man to question why God abandoned the Earth just as Jesus asked why God had forsaken him on the cross in Matthew 27 46 but of course all these questions go unanswered but our willingness to endure this silence to maintain our morality and push forward as imperfect beings while the supposedly perfect silent God watches over our fallen world that is the Keener light that all humans possess if you like this video please make sure to give it a like it helps me out more than you know make sure to subscribe if you want to see more anime analysis like this in the future finally if you like the work I am doing here please consider supporting me on patreon or joining my YouTube members section I will leave a link to both in the description box below until next week I want to remind you guys as always and as per usual stay yellow foreign

Channel: Max Derrat

Views: 85,048

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Id: _U7m7wbGmWs

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022