'Avalon': mortal reality hits a "fave list"

The outstandingly gifted Japanese musician whose photo I've pinched here is Kenji Kawai, whose compositions played a key role in that Manga turned cult movie, 'Ghost in the Shell,' which I briefly covered at my place (log) last August.
Along with 'Avalon'!
Kenji — who works with Macs, bless him (profile at 'kenjikawai') — pursued his musical partnership with the fabulous writer & director team, Mamoru Ishii and Kazunori Itô, on 'Avalon' (2001), such a strange Japanese-Polish co-production of a film that when the Kid and I first saw it on the big screen it really needs we both emerged quite stunned.
I wasn't sure whether I'd just seen the most virtuoso piece of sluggish nonsense or a chef d'oeuvre. All I knew was that I needed to watch this movie again, so utterly was I drawn into its bleak, mainly sepia-tonal world.
It was gone in a couple of days, my chance lost, but it's one of the very few films to have haunted me at a deep level since; and not least Kenji's astounding musical score, which you can just about still find on a Virgin France CD, ranging from electronica to oratorio. 'Ghost' (Amazon UK) is easier to track down.

Like Kenji's soundtrack, which takes on such crucial importance in the closing scenes of 'Avalon' that to say more would be a spoiler, "ghosts" play a key role in this film too.
Summed up in a line or two, 'Avalon' is the story of Ash, chilled out "warrior" who makes a living playing an illegal virtual reality war game set, with the help of the Polish military, in some near future reminiscent of a hungry, hopeless Cold War bloc '1984'.
Ash has become one of the game's few solo players since her team, the Wizards, cracked up in a clash which left one of her partners brain-dead and hospitalised. In a world that offers precious little else, for her and a few others the game — and the explicit parallels it draws with recurrent aspects of the Arthurian legends — has become more than life itself.

On its release, this extraordinary fable of realities was swept into the shadows by the massive box office hit of 'The Matrix,' with which 'Avalon' was initially compared by several misguided critics.
Well, last night I saw it again.
Once and a half times...
My own Mac has been so badly behaved under Panther (Apple's new operating system) when it comes to the built-in CD drive that I cracked and finally acquired — yes, DVD: a darned good external CD and DVD read-and-write drive.
The same me who has long cursed both the horrors of television and the whole home movie thing.

Article Author: Nick Barrett

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