From Mamoru Oshii, the world-acclaimed director of Ghost in the Shell comes an award-winning story of an exciting but endless war with heroes too young to understand the meaning of their battles. A group of eternally young fighter pilots known as Kildren experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds. With his only childhood memory consisting of intense flight training, the fearless teenage pilot Yuichi’s dogfights coexist with his struggle to find his missing past. When his beautiful, young female commander Suito is reluctant to discuss the fate of the pilot that Yuichi is replacing – or the strangely perfect condition of that pilot’s former aircraft – Yuichi’s curiosity becomes heightened.
Starring: Rinko Kikuchi, Ryo Kase, Shôsuke Tanihara, Megumi Yamaguchi, Daisuke Hirakawa
Directed by: Mamoru Oshii
Runtime: 122 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
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A world without wars is akin to utopia but at present it’s an ideal we can only dream of. In Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, based on the novel by Hiroshi Mori, actually depicts the an alternate world without war but sadly the love of action, the swing of the pendulum between life and death is still highly sought by those in this idyll.
The film focuses on a world where peace is welcomed by many but for some the desire to fight is too great. Rival corporations face off in daring dogfights in the skies and these aerial duels help fuel the need for combat. On one such base a new pilot arrives by the name of Yuichi and he causes quite a stir. Much is made of Yuichi’s predecessor that flew the now empty plane that is given to him. This previous pilot is the talk of the airbase and even seems to have tugged at the heartstrings of Suito, who is withdrawn in her office and spends a lot of time smoking. Adapting to this new corporation, Yuichi fills his days socialising with his fellow pilots, pursuing women and waiting for the call to return to the skies where one pilot – the Teacher – awaits and leaves all other pilots in fear.
The Sky Crawlers was not quite what I expected when I first began watching it but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We learn that the young men and women that frequent the airbase are kildren which forms something of a mystery in the film. The kildren are forever young and it is unclear in the film just how old the characters we spend our time with really are. For a world where there is the need for war, the reality of the life and death tussles in the air weigh heavily on the characters. There is a lot of waiting around the airbase, reading newspapers (one pilot routinely folds his several times), passing the hours anyway the pilots can. What could be construed as monotonous is actually powerful in conveying characters who are forced to live each day as if it will be their last, which it could very well be.
Although the waiting around of the characters didn’t bother me in the slightest I was still somewhat disappointed by the end. The futility of war is captured well here, the overall irony of the love of fighting countered by the mentally exhausted characters who have to summon the will to continue flying their planes, it all seems so wasteful. By the end credits though I felt something was missing from The Sky Crawlers. It was almost as if we’d had a good build up and the film had been cut short abruptly. The end result isn’t bad but it could have been so much better.
The Sky Crawlers has some good elements especially reflecting why we don’t need wars and shouldn’t be fighting at all. All the early promise sadly subsides by the end. The ending cuts the story short too quickly and I was to lament what is in the end a missed opportunity.
Verdict: 3/5
(Film source: reviewer’s own copy)
Film Review: The Sky Crawlers | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave
