Seen at AMC Fitchburg before a screening of Sheep in the Box.
I enjoyed Sheep in the Box but felt it held back, for lack of a better way of saying it. The premise is that a couple whose son died order a life-like robotic of him to assuage their grief. I expected more conflict/discussion between the husband, Kensuke, and wife, Otone, to go deeper into their relationship as well as the question of what it means to be human.
There's fairly little discussion about how well the android fills the space left by the death of their son, Kakeru, and I struggle to recall exactly how this is treated non-verbally. If memory serves, Otone's sister verbalizes something that gets tossed around a bit: that this new simulacrum is just as good as the real thing if Otone and Kensuke think it is. This stands in sharp contrast to Otone's mother who leaves a note on the refrigerator saying she wants a real grandson.
The more I think about it, the more scenes I recall that deal with the human vs. simulacrum tension. But it feels like they were put together with bailing twine and duct tape, that they don't hold together quite right.
I did really like the gang of other androids along with the odd human being that Kakeru falls in with and, eventually, leaves his "family" for. It vaguely reminded me of the android police station in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
Trees are a motif here. Otone's mother urges her to deracinate a tree that is associated with her dead son. Because she is an architect, Otone builds models and she includes trees with them. In the movie, she is designing a house for a couple that is to be perched upon a small hill in the middle of town. She tries to sell the design to the couple by noting how the house would be surrounded by trees. Furthermore, Otone buys a tree for Kakeru and we see them plant it in a spot chosen by the android. And, in the end, the motley, disheveled group that Kakeru falls in with leave the town and move out into the woods.
This last act shows a couple things. First it displays a desire on the part of androids to seclude themselves away from humans and their society. But I think it also demonstrates that Kakeru has learned from Otone. We know of Otone's fondness for trees already. Now, when Kakeru first encounters the group of misfits, they live in the basement of a disused church. Their leader tasks Kakeru with finding a new place for them to live and, as he eventually see, he chooses the woods, he chooses a place filled with trees. Being pro-tree, I appreciated this greatly.
Alright, onto trailers.
Man, there were a lot of them. Lots of anime and animated features, generally.
Tree!
