Object: Ghost in the shell II – Innocence (2004)
IMDB | Trailer
If a living being’s base is information that makes up its DNA then culture and society too are just huge centers of information, therefore cities reflect the society inside it.
Batô in GITS II
The first thing that strikes you about this picture and its predecessor is the vast diffence between the production technology used. In the first movie the whole language of the images speak of a more traditional technique which makes the characters movement stiffer and all together a more static picture. That makes the successor feel extremely deep and serious. But the whole difference is so big it feels like a whole lifetime passed by inbetween! The only continuence, talking about the techniques, is in the characters which has kept most of their look. It is very hard not to see GITS II as a completely stand-alone!
The plot is a quite simple one; Batô is a cyborg detective (we recognize him and many other charactes from the predecessor) in the year 2032. When a female modeled robot created for sexual pleasure slaughters its owner Batô and his associate gets the case. However, as much as this is a movie about a serach for a criminal, as much it is a movie philosophical movie about the boundary between man and machine; what would (will?) happen if that line gets erased? So if you’re just looking for action, you might get disappointed, but it is a movie very beatuiful in its images.
Two other compareable movies entered my mind when watching this; “Blade Runner” and “I, Robot”. A funny thing is that GITS II and I, Robot got released in the same
year, GITS II in March and I, Robot in July. And there are some scenes
that actually easily could have switched picture. But when I, Robot is just a “cheap” Hollywood interpretation of Isaac Asimovs great novel about logic and robots with the same name, GITS II raises almost the same questions, but in the estethics of Blade Runner where every step is dark and every movement filled with destiny. GITS II leaves the viewer with long moments of silence, giving a moment to step away from the plot and just think of the envirionment and the philosophy. Especially one scene sticks to my mind, and that is when the two detectives visit a zone of anarchy and there is this amazing carneval with huge dolls that just blows your mind. And I couldn’t even tell why it was there or why. There are moments in this movie you wish they never would end just because of the beauty of the picture…
Back to the comparation with Blade Runner. Both main characters are lonely men without family put face to face with existential questions. Batô is a cyborg and maybe has more similarity with the replicants in Blade Runner, but he faces the same question about what existence and life is? In one way it’s a bit of an irony that the characters in GITS II looks more hand made than the computerized envirionment they walk around in when they themselves has stretched their humanity into the world of the machines. There is also a quite hysterical kind of “Pandora’s box-place” similar to the home of the genetics designer in Blade Runner.
Now, do I have to give this movie a grade?
