My main interest in life, other than films, is reading ‘classic’ science fiction. I love the 50’s/60’s/70’s stuff, and one of my favourite authors is Philip K Dick. I’m often struck when watching modern films by the many similarities that often arise between these films and Dick’s work. I’m not just talking about really obvious examples, like THE TRUMAN SHOW (an unashamed rip-off of Dick’s TIME OUT OF JOINT (1959)), but lots of other stuff, from all around the world. Why am I talking about this in a review of a Japanese film? Well, I was very struck by the similarities between this film’s central premise and Dick’s short story THE DAYS OF PERKY PAT (1963) and novel THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1964). Additionally, Dick’s favourite themes were ‘what is human?’ and ‘what is reality?’; both are equally central to AVALON’s structure, and the puzzles it provides the viewer with are very reminiscent of the multi-layered meanings to be found in Dick’s writing. William Gibson's name also inevitably springs to mind when watching this film and others, another very influential SF author...

The film opens with a spectacular battle involving tanks and a gun ship. A lone female defeats the military, before ‘logging off’. The woman is Ash (played by Malgorzata Foremniak), a player of an illegal Virtual Reality game called ‘Avalon’. Ash is a ‘Class A’ player, who lives alone with her basset hound in a miserable world, sometime in the future (when exactly is not specified). This world is bleak and poor, with ancient transport systems and few luxuries (sounds a bit like England at the moment actually…) Points earned in the game can be exchanged for cash, and people watch the games on holographic screens, seemingly hypnotised. One day Ash walks past a group of these watchers, who are commenting on the skill of the player they’re watching; “He’s even better than Ash”, one says. Of course, Ash must know who he is and feels that the man (a ‘Bishop’ class) is challenging her through the game. She tries to find out who he is and discovers that he is a lone player, who logs into the game through his own private terminal, meaning that he cannot be traced (everyone else logs in at an underground Avalon station). Ash meets up with an old friend, Stunner, who we discover once played Avalon in a team with Ash, called ‘Wizard’. Wizard were the best team in the history of the game, but split up acrimoniously, when one of them called ‘Reset’, i.e. escaped them back to reality. Stunner tells Ash about another old friend, Murphy, the team’s Bishop (Ash was the one of the team’s ‘Warriors’ whilst Stunner was their ‘Thief’). After Wizard’s disbanding he went solo and got lost, meaning that he is in a coma, induced by total immersion in the game. Ash tries to find out more, and discovers that a ‘Class A Special’ exists, from which you cannot ’reset’. This is where Murphy has gone. How does one enter this Class? Well, it seems that there is a neutral character (a young girl) who sometimes appears to teams. She is a kind of ghost in the system, hence she is called ‘the ghost’. She is the key to the hidden field that is Special A. To see the ghost, the team must have a Bishop who has reached Class A Complete, which requires a lot of money and Experience Points.

Ash tries to discover which players are in the ‘Class A Complete’, but finds that all are ‘lost’, except for someone called ‘Nine Sisters’. Ash returns to her apartment to cook a meal for her dog. We hear the dog come to meet her, but don’t see it. When she has finished the meal, she finds that the dog isn’t there. The Bishop from the game contacts Ash and they agree to form a team (a standard team consists of three Warriors, a Bishop, a Thief and a Mage). They meet in Avalon and fight a citadel. The ghost then appears and Ash chases it. When she catches it, she shoots it and enters Class A Special; “Welcome to Class Real” a message tells her.

Ash awakens is her apartment (she logged in at the Avalon terminal centre), the dog’s bowl still on the floor. She opens the window only to be confronted by a brick wall. The computer tells her that to win this level she must finish off the ‘unreturned’ (the lost players, like Murphy). She is reset to basic level and has one pistol and one clip of ammo. She mustn’t hurt the neutral characters and the only way to exit is to complete the level. If she wins she can become one of the Nine Sisters, the designers of the Avalon system (of whom the Bishop was a member).

Ash leaves the building, coming out in a modern (i.e. our time) street, with normal people and cars, etc. She meets up with Murphy at a concert hall and they discuss the nature of this level; is this reality, or was the other world reality? The only way to find out for sure is for one of them to kill the other and to see if the body remains...

AVALON is a stunning visual experience. The opening scenes involving real tanks and military hardware are amazing and make one realise how rarely a director makes full use of the awesome sight of a tank bearing down on the viewer! The film was shot in Poland, featuring mainly Polish actors and making use of the Polish military’s equipment to dazzling effect. Everything is digitised, allowing manipulation of everything (people, items) to give the effect of a game (for example when someone is killed, their image breaks up and shatters). The game scenes are shot through a yellow filter, whilst the everyday scenes are shot in a bleak sunless gray, emphasising the monotony of this world’s inhabitants’ daily lives. This is hammered home in several scenes, in order to explain people’s willingness to surrender their lives to a VR game; Ash sits alone in her drab apartment, the only furniture a computer which she checks for mail (and doesn’t receive any). The closest thing to a friend that Ash has is the computer ‘Game Master’ (played by Wladyslaw Kowalski, a famous Polish actor who appeared in Kieslowski’s THE DEKALOG (1987) and LA DOUBLE VIE DE VÉRONIQUE (1991) amongst other things), with whom she has several key discussions (the GM appears to be wearing a clerical collar, though this isn’t expounded upon).

The production design in AVALON is extremely impressive – aside from the digital effects and the military hardware, the realistic interactions with computer terminals (doesn’t that chair/headset remind you of RUBBER’S LOVER (1996) though?), the often beautiful photography of futuristic Poland’s bleak communist-style landscape and the scene in which Ash enters Class Real, to be bathed in colour and sunlight are all very well executed. The costumes worn by the characters are also more impressive than in a usual film, with strange clothes and headgear abounding, yet managing to look ‘right’. The computer effects in the film are equally impressive, and the citadel that the team fight towards the end of the film is an amazing piece of design, better than anything I’ve ever seen in a Hollywood film (it actually reminded me of the tank/man at the end of TETSUO II (1992) more than anything else). Wow!

The film was directed by anime guru Mamoru Oshii, the man behind the classic anime GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) and the PATLABOR series, as well as the JIN-ROH film (1998). Oshii’s anime credentials are apparent in the lovingly filmed battle scenes, and also in the carefully planned camera movements. He proves a surprisingly effective live action director, though perhaps one shouldn’t be too surprised; after all, Katsuhiro Otomo, the man behind the equally seminal anime AKIRA (1988), also made an impressive live action film, WORLD APARTMENT HORROR (1991). Evidently, anime directors can turn their hand to anything they please! Interestingly, AVALON was written by Kazunori Ito, who is well known for writing the awesome 90’s trilogy of GAMERA films (plus the aforementioned GHOST IN THE SHELL), so AVALON must have marked somewhat of a departure from style for him. The use of a female as the central character in a film about very masculine obsessions (war and violent computer games) would seem to be a clever move on Ito’s part, although the role of Ash was apparently intended for a man initially, but Oshii decided that casting a woman would be more effective (Oshii reputedly chose Foremniak as the lead due to her resemblance to the lead character in GHOST IN THE SHELL).

The name ‘Avalon’ refers to a legendary island where heroes would be laid to rest, a “faraway isle of apple groves and mist” according to a softly sung song featured several times in the film. Arthur was supposedly laid to rest there, and the reference to the ‘Nine Sisters’ in the film involves another piece of Arthurian legend, Morgan Le Fay, who was one of the Nine Sisters who watched over the island. However, Avalon also seems to be a state of mind, a nirvana or utopia that one can only attain through heightened awareness. Ash says that she wants to enter the Special A level in order to find Murphy, but the real reason for her determination is escape – the fact that she won’t be able to ‘reset’ the game is an irresistible temptation for her and what does she have to lose anyway? The idea of ‘Avalon’ is certainly a metaphor for something, but what exactly Oshii doesn’t make clear (the last scene is deliberately obscure in its meaning and the words ‘Welcome to Avalon’ that flash up could be interpreted in whatever manner the viewer wishes).

I’ve read some comments written about the film in which people berated it for being slow-moving; this certainly wasn’t the case in my opinion. I found the film as a whole fascinating and never felt bored at any point. Admittedly, those expecting some sort of straight forward action film with big tanks (as the trailer sold it to be) are going to be a tad disappointed, but anyone looking for an intelligent meditation on VR and the meaningless of modern life is going to be well-pleased! Seriously though, the film has a lot more going for it than its (admittedly impressive) effects work. Oshii has produced an effective, clever and original film using a unique filming technique along the way, and I would look forward to any further live action films he may decide to turn his hand to in the future. Having said all that, I am a sucker for well told SF stories, as I intimated at the start of this review, so perhaps that biases me just a little bit...

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