--Aramaki, Ghost in the Shell
"Your shell belongs to them, but not your ghost. Your ghost is yours."
--Kuze, Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell succeeds when it comes to its aesthetic uniqueness, the natural merging of its philosophical side and its story, the performance of Scarlett Johansson. In fact, few movies can rival or match its sheer visual brilliance in ways that actually reflect the core themes of identity and what it means to emphasize the nonphysical nature of consciousness in a world that has numerous technological means of ensnaring the senses, even more than the contemporary world in which viewers watch the movie itself. The limited character development of characters besides Mira, played by Scarlett Johansson, is one of the few examples of potential that was not actualized as much as it could have been, while the primary performance and the visuals are superb.
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| Photo credit: ventonero2002 on VisualHunt |
Production Values
The opening scene alone, which shows the android body Mira inhabits as it is designed, uses colors, in-universe technology, and steady camera shots to establish the excellent artistic skill behind the film. This style lasts throughout the rest of the movie, making Ghost in the Shell by far one of the most visually strong movies of the past decade. The characters, by comparison, are usually not as strong. Yes, there are flashes of clear personality that come through from characters other than Scarlett Johansson's Mira, but it is Mira herself that forms the core of the film's characterization. Scarlett Johansson portrays a character with nuance even through her sometimes muted emotional expression (which is entirely plausible as a characterization factor given that she is a human-machine hybrid with distorted memories of her life). Mira also is the focus of several key action scenes that are like tamer versions of the action in The Matrix--which is not a negative thing! The very stylish science fiction world and the choreography of certain fights blend in ways that could even put philosophically apathetic people in a more philosophically awed state of mind.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
A corporation called Hanka Robotics seeks to put a human brain in a machine body in a futuristic era where humans and machines are already more integrated than ever. A woman named Mira has her brain and its consciousness (the two are linked but not identical, after all) placed into a humanoid machine body, becoming "Major," a special tool for Hanka. As an enigmatic hacker named Kuze threatens Hanka Robotics, Major and a companion investigate, all while she struggles with increasingly intrusive glitches, or at least what seems to be glitches. When she does finally meet Kuze, he makes a series of claims that, if true, would change Mira's sense of self and force her to embrace strange possibilities.
Intellectual Content
Several idiotic statements made early in the movie, one being Dr. Oulette's claim that a truly conscious machine could not do everything a human could do, contradict important truths about human metaphysics even if they are never explicitly corrected in the film. Another character shown early on says that his machine enhancements make him able to do anything and know anything, but machine components not only have nothing at all to with erasing epistemological limitations--for instance, even if I was a conscious machine or a human-machine hybrid, I could not know if other minds exist or if something I remember happening yesterday truly did happen--but they also cannot make anything capable of doing logically impossible things. Even Major asks what the difference between a glitch in her perceptions and her own self truly is. The answer, as any rationalist should easily recognize, is that the visual and audio sensory perceptions that Major is asking about cannot be proven to correspond to the external world no matter the technology one is aided or surrounded by. Experientially, looking at a brain inside or outside of a body is not the same as looking at memories, thoughts, emotions, and intentions, and it is actually the world of matter that can be distorted on the level of perception; one's thoughts and experiences are being experienced either way.
Conclusion
It could have done a better job with its wider cast, but Ghost in the Shell at least has something to offer viewers who explicitly appreciate when a story naturally, directly stares into major philosophical issues. Moreover, fans of Scarlett Johansson's diverse range of film roles have much to appreciate here as well. Mira is not her best performance, but it is not a poor performance by any means. There is still plenty to admire about this live action version of Ghost in the Shell on an artistic level. The ideal audience for this movie is someone content to let visual worldbuilding provoke a very philosophical atmosphere for the entire movie--something that is rarely done in cinema at large. After all, the mass audiences so many studios target at the expense of authentic storytelling and philosophical depth make more intellectual stories seem risky.
Content:
1. Violence: Humans and machines exchange gunfire and blows with each other.
2. Profanity:
3. Nudity: The android's body is shown "naked" in the opening scene, with one shot showing part of its buttocks up close.
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