Here’s something you don’t see every day: Japanese producers, Japanese writers, and a Japanese director with a Japanese crew – filmed in Poland, and staring Polish actors (not a Japanese in sight). The reviews of AVALON were as divided as this cultural rift, ranging from “Boring” to “Pointless” to “Pure art” to “A masterpiece!”

Mamoru Oshii, who directed GHOST IN THE SHELL (If you want more information about GHOST – considered by many to be the greatest anime of all time – click HERE.), takes AVALON a step further: seamlessly blending together animated and live action worlds to create a hybrid, very moody, shadow “reality” that resides inside all of us on one level or another.

The movie starts by giving us the following information:

“ The near future.
“ Some young people deal with their disillusionment by seeking out illusions of their own – in an illegal virtual reality war game, its simulated thrills and deaths are compulsive and addictive. Some players, working in teams called “parties,” even earn their living from the game.
“ The game has its dangers.
“ Sometimes it can leave a player brain-dead, needing constant medical care. Such victims are called ‘unreturned.’ The game is named after the legendary island where the souls of departed heroes come to rest: Avalon.”

AVALON centers around Ash, a solo player who was once part of the greatest “party” ever formed – a party that disbanded for reasons not given to the general public, but is explored more and more as the movie, slowly and subtly, unveils its secrets. Malgorzata Foremniak (Ash) looks amazingly like GHOST IN THE SHELL’S anime heroine, Major Motoko Kusanagi, and one can understand why Oshii was compelled to choose this actress.

Though Foremniak is a very beautiful woman, the nuances of her performance are what drives AVALON, and it soon becomes clear that the world she lives in (outside of the game) reflects her personality in every way – she rarely speaks, and her world is largely silent; she appears emotionally cold and detached, yet the world surrounding her shows us her true loneliness and pain; she is a cold-blooded warrior in the game but, in “reality,” is constantly fighting to cover up her fragility; Ash herself seems colorless, and the darkness of her world mirrors this perfectly.

AVALON is a film of many layers, stunning special effects, and ideas – it forces us to step outside the typical Hollywood models of “happily ever after” and “every movie needs a love interest” and “don’t make the audience think.” It’s a journey whose slow pace drags the viewer into an altered state and makes him one with the movie and its message. Yes, some might find the demands of introspection and concentration boring, preferring a non-stop hail of bullets, vapid tales of “true love,” and/or syrupy emotional manipulation. But Hollywood has nothing to do with this film (thank god!), and the game within a game within a game that Ash resides struck me far closer to home than anything I’ve seen in a great number of years.

When AVALON ended, there were many things left unanswered, but this seemed highly appropriate. After all, do any of us solve all of life’s questions? Do any of us ever come to the end of our individual adventure? Oshii himself, in an interview by Davinci, says it best: “Hollywood films about virtual reality always end with a return to the real world. However, because those real worlds exist inside film, they themselves are lies. Reality is a questionable thing, I didn’t want to do a movie where the characters returned to reality. Conclusively, reality doesn’t actually exist anywhere. The one we experience is an illusion inside the heart of each individual.”

AVALON is a magnificent movie. It has its flaws, but they are majestically transcended by the richness of the feast that Oshii has treated us to. If you enjoy films with a philosophical bent, and if you are the kind of person who occasionally tries to peer at life without the glasses of personality coloring your vision, then this is a MUST SEE. If you are looking for fast paced entertainment where adrenaline kicks in and the brain clicks off, you’ll be well advised to go elsewhere.