Angel's Egg

These are my thoughts after watching the film and discussing with some friends.

Watching Angel's Egg, I never really processed it as a film. For sure, I can enjoy slow movies, art movies, movies rich with symbolism or impressionist depictions of non-literal scenes. But watching Angel's Egg, I was never captivated. I wasn't thinking about it as a piece of art that I was taking in; I was thinking about it in the abstract: "I am watching this film." Great art makes you feel something by emotional fiat; it's not a good sign that I spent the entire movie thinking, "is this making me feel anything?"

Before getting into what the film means, I think it's worth breaking down why that is. Simply put, Angel's Egg is all garnish, no food. It's a sandwich with just lettuce and bread. The characters spend at least half of the film not interacting, and when they do interact it's typically only through a few short lines of dialogue at a time, or maybe a single gesture at each other. The story is spread thin: our heroine walks around for twenty minutes, meets a boy, walks around for twenty more minutes, enters a spot of danger, then walks around for another thirty minutes before things start happening again. All of this is fine of course. But if you don't have story and you don't have characters, what's left to grab the viewer? Well, it's the visuals, right? But almost the entire film is painted in three shades of bluish-gray. Many of the backgrounds are left deliberately undrawn, or else they have a single detailed focal point with the rest being left as gestalt. Some individual frames are very beautiful out of context, but when you're presented with 70 minutes of the same basic idea, it's very difficult to get invested in them.

The end result is a film where the art, story, and characters are all trying to be the quiet part. Every aspect of the film is understated, comfortable being present only occasionally. But the entire movie can't fit on the backburner. There needs to be something to reel you in, and there just isn't.

So, what is the story actually about? I won't recap the plot here, because there isn't much of it. But Angel's Egg is absolutely steeped in symbolism, and it's clearly meant to be understood on that level. So, what does the film have to say? Well, to my eyes, it says this: humanity is fundamentally doomed. Hope is eternal, but most will never achieve it. The few who do live only to be punished for it.

To me, no other interpretation makes sense. The egg is of course a symbol of hope, a living thing in a ruined world, something to be protected and nurtured by the innocent, waiting to hatch a bird, an animal that is famously free. In the end, the egg is destroyed, and more eggs are created. The film is riddled with blblical references, especially to the flood. Water imagery abounds, from our heroine collecting water in bottles to men trying to catch fish that aren't there. In the most dialogue-heavy scene in the film by far, the boy tells us the story of Noah. And in his telling, he's very clear: the world is dead because God has forsaken it. But is that true?

I don't think we're meant to take his word for it. He is an unreliable character: consistently cynical, ultimately betraying the girl and destroying her egg seemingly out of mere boredom. Hearing him blame the end of the world on God rings too cute to me. It sounds much more like cope from our allegorical Cain. And there's no shortage of military and technological imagery, even where it overlaps with water: the girl is collecting water in round-bottomed flasks, and the men hunting imaginary fish are in military uniforms, violently hurling spears at shadows and endangering our protagonists. In the end, we see that the ruined world is shaped like a boat, capsized, floating upside-down over an endless sea. So no, I don't think this is meant to be God's fault. Humanity fucked everything up, because that's what humans do. We see two people in the film, and one of them betrays the other. The one doing the betrayal is armed with stigmata, and a crucifix that stays slung over his shoulder until he uses it to destroy hope. So if he's a Christ allegory, then again, is it actually God's fault? But again, that feels too cute. You can't escape blame for your bad deeds by dressing up as Jesus. And anyway, Christ is meant to be the redeemer. This film clearly isn't anti-religion, for a lot of reasons. Call it mixed messaging or call it nuance, but I don't think we're meant to understand that God is responsible for mankind betraying one another.

In the end, the girl is martyred, ascending to some kind of sainthood as she joins the rows of statues on the floating eye of Providence. She's in a better place now; that's hopeful, right? But make no mistake: for every one of those statues, there's another in the ruined world, and about ten soldiers trying desperately to stab at shadows of a fish. I don't think it's fair to accept the saved statues as a symbol of hope, without accepting that the vast majority of the pseudo-humans we see are decidedly not saved. Humanity is doomed because humans are doomed.

So, putting it all together: Angel's Egg is a film that absolutely lives and dies by its allegory, because everything else is trying to play the support role. But what is the allegory saying? Well, again: hope springs eternal. Those who suffer for their hope are saved. Humankind is fundamentally wicked. Birds are free and humans are stuck on land. So, if we're going to judge the film by its allegory, then I have to ask: is this good symbolism? Is it using metaphor to connect dots you wouldn't have connected with the concrete? Are the images and themes of the film especially original or valuable? I certainly don't think so. I don't think hope leads to despair in the mortal life. I don't think humanity is inherently wicked. And I certainly don't need a story to tell me that it is by way of a bird that represents hope and freedom.

I'm not actively upset that I watched this film, and I don't think it's unsalvageable by any means. But it does need salvaging.