Tenshi no Tamago

"Tenshi no Tamago" (Angel's Egg, 1985) could be another piece in the row of surrealist art that I wrote earlier that I wanted to write about. It is what I like to sometimes call "an inner language film". It is a story of a pure feeling, perhaps "trust" would be the word that gives a good idea of what it is about, but perhaps it is better to say that it is about the fact that in a relationship one will inevitably hurt the other. Due to its nature, this 71 minutes long animated film is basically plotless and ambiguous, we follow the weird journey of two characters in a devastated Gothic world: a girl guarding and egg, and a man who befriends her. The girl gradually becomes confident that the man does not want the egg, but then... Some associate this feeling with a turn in director Mamoru Oshii's own life, namely a loss of faith during the time he was trained to become a priest. But I don't think we need such speculations whether they are true or not, because the feelings depicted are quite general so that many people with different backgrounds may recognize them. The artwork is that of Yoshitaka Amano, and some originals can be seen in the first video I am posting, which was probably made when the film was in an initial stage. The other "trailer" is edited from the film itself, using a piece from the original soundtrack of Yoshihiro Kanno (one that is also a favorite of mine). It is funny to remember that I ordered the cd with the original sound track directly from Japan some ten years ago. Back then it wasn't so easy to order or even to find such things online... Today you may watch the whole thing on youtube.