Red Spectacles

 
This movie is one that would probably be called depressive or labelled as "not for everybody". Probably these statements have truth to them. This is no action movie, in fact action is only symbolic in this film. It lacks any real interpersonal drama that would make it easier to identify with everyday events. But this is in fact the strength of the movie. This movie is an intrapersonal landscape, and it is more about the director, Mamoru Oshii, than about the characters. This is the state that predates (sometimes replaces) dramatic action in ourselves. For this reason it is weird, as every inner thought is to the rest of the world, as it is formless, not made up to motivate actions for others to interpret. We cross rational barriers for behaviour and reality often with a surrealistic sense of humour as we slowly go forward. A blind feeling of being lost in a frustrating labyrinth, while chasing a dream that evades us and flees into reality. Whereas it is true that sticking forever to an inner feeling is depressive, constantly avoiding it by action is only running away from it. I think the movie is a beauty of its kind, while probably it is very well that it never got into the "mainstream". One of my favourites as a rarety for its ability to grasp a feeling before it is necessarily limited by the interpretation or bound by the expectations of the outer world, even though I don't watch it every day to keep the bridge to that very world outside where our dreams have fled waiting to be discovered.