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Arcadia of my Youth
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: weird
- made: unknown
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
I'll be a bit risky here, but i'll state that there are two ways to see this film. On the one hand it is an epic science fiction saga covering important events and human tragedy against the background of interstellar war and the origin of captain Harlock. On the other hand it could be seen as an attempt to explore a particularly male philosophy of life. Of course since the males don't seem to have very long lives, there being a lot of noble sacrifice and being honorable in the middle of battles, I wonder how many modern people are still attracted to this sort of thing. The degree to which you are willing to allow this experiment, in this long film, will determine the degree to which you enjoy it. If not the long speeches, soliloquys and illogical but honorable acts could easily wear you down. There are a reasonable number of action sequences, interesting characters and older but skilled animation to entertain, but these are not sufficient when taken independant of the message being explored. Harlock's (and Emeraldas') symbol is the pirate skull and crossbones (albeit on a retro-tech spaceship) and this gives some idea of the kind of viewpoint being developed here.
The talented folks at THEM have an excellent and positive review of this `melodramatic space opera'.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:15 WST 2009