Director : Carl Colpaert
Starring : Tony Markes, Rainbow Dolan, Filiz Tully. Japan/Australia. 1h 25m
There is always an element of Love and Hate with this Anime/Live Action mashup, the film will captured my affection many year ago and I still enjoy watching it, while blindingly unaware of it’s origins I just assumed two directors got together to produce this mix of post apocalyptic drama/ baroque mystery, many years later I realised how this project basically butt fucked a precious classic Anime movie and turned it into a Troma movie BUT I still adore it.
So the original Anime is Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 undefinable classic Angel’s Egg, which sees a young girl traverse an abandoned town while nursing a giant egg and entertaining a young soldier, the film dissolves into a biblical darkness that even the director himself can’t really explain. But Carl Colpaert decided to rehash the strong imagery in between new footage filmed in the hot Australian desert and brings new life and meaning to the bizarre original.
In the Aftermath follows a man named Frank (Markes) who’s one of a small number of survivors in a terrible post apocalyptic future, while travelling around in a Mad Max ⅔ style desert landscape with his best friend, the pair are attacked by a psychotic soldier who kills Franks buddy and steals their air, Frank is saved by Dr Sarah (Tully) but while drifting in and out of consciousness he’s transported to a dark (animated) world where two angels harbor a gift that could potentially save humanity.
A majority of the film is Animated an overdubbed with new lines, totally unrelated to the original but they conjure up a story of an angel who’s guarding her egg and her older brother who’s schooling her in becoming a better angel, lesson one is that she should never fall asleep.
There isn’t much to the 1h 25 minutes, the new additions show s desolate nuclear wasteland future which isn’t all that appealing and the only highlight is a beautiful piano piece that Frank plays while wistfully thinking about his Angel in one of hew few waking moments, the song is ‘Carnavalito Tango‘ written by Horacio Moscovici.
On the whole the story works, poetic and beautiful, but there really wasn’t much to it. Colpaert did manage to make more sense of the clips he lifted from the original, but it isn’t a BETTER story just a different one. I’m pretty sure if you re dub any Anime you can turn it into something completely different, on its own it’s a pretty ok movie, but knowing what I know now, it’s okay but also quite insulting.
For apocalyptic movies it brings in some fresh ideas with the Animated aspects, but it’s a total mash up and not many will really appreciate it’s patchwork efforts. It’s an okay bit of fantasy but nothing to be taken too seriously.
Rating 6/10
R: Angel’s Egg (1985), Hardwear (1990)
L: Live action/Animation Films
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