They are provided basic fixed memories but in reality they have no hard evidence that they are individuals. Although every character has their own attributes and specific customs that are carried on even after death, without the knowledge of history, they are doomed to be lost within the animosity of their lack of information. Evidence of this can be seen with a character that was supposedly killed in an air battle but then is replaced with a similar character attributing the same habits as the previous character. This new person has similar features, habits, and style putting into question, “are we really individuals and to what extent?” It’s in this way that creates a need for the past to be felt by the characters, which intrigues us, the viewers, to want to understand what has happened.
While on the subject of history and how there is a need for the past, within the movie there is a similar negligence of historic information as Oshii only provides many instances of hints and clues that paint the big picture. Throughout the movie very limited information is provided to us about the main story. We, as the viewers, are required to infer the story behind the scene. It’s almost as if we are put in the position of the kildren and are made to experience all that a kildren would experience. There is no point within the movie that explains exactly what has happened previously, but only moments in which the characters’ experience to allow us to have our own assumptions of what had happened. Usually nothing is perfectly stated out in the open about what had happened, and in the times that something is stated, we do not know if it is the real truth or just the information from a third party. Without the experience provided by the character’s own history, it is not possible to be sure if the information given is supposed to be actual truth or a diluted truth. Since the main characters in the movie have no history, they have a need of history which causes the viewers to be intrigued into what had happened in their past.
In the beginning of the film, there is a scene where Yuichi, the main flier pilot who had just entered the base has a number of questions about past events and why things are the way they are. “Who was the previous owner of the plane? Where did he go? Why was he transferred out? Did he die? When taking over a plane, surely it’s normal to have contact with the previous pilot? Are you a kildren?” Yuichi has a need to know what had previously happened on the base, and we as the viewers, are intrigued by how this story is being told. We are put into the position of Yuichi, being weary of asking the wrong questions and getting in trouble, but still having the desire to know more. Another scene which shows a need for the past is when Kusanagi, presumed the most knowledgeable and experienced of the kildren, seems depressed and lost. It is as seen when she recollects old memories, which have no assurance of reality, but causes her to reminisce. The scene in which I am referring to is when she goes into Yuichi’s room and has a remorseful look on her face as she smells Yuichi’s scent on his bed and remembers a different time. In the viewer’s eyes, we are unable to understand anything, but are able to see the residue of history left behind and experienced by Kusanagi.
(Figure 1)
Kusanagi’s sufferage is further shown when she goes into the town to have fun. Kusanagi and Yuichi eats dinner together and we find that she’s a had a bit too much to drink and can’t really walk straight. Yuichi helps Kusanagi walk and she points a gun to his head asking “Do you want me to kill you? Or would you grant me death? Otherwise we’ll be like this forever.” In this line, it seems as though she’s being tortured by the burden of knowledge which is making her suffer, but what exactly this suffering is, is unknown to Yuichi and the viewers. Progressing a bit further into the movie, Mitsuya is with Yuichi in his room and she talk of how things are. She then proceeds to break down from her lack of history. She cries and confesses to Yuichi that she has “no sense of solidity at all” and that everything she knows could be lie. She asks out loud, “How do you all stay in control of your feelings? How exactly do you connect your endlessly repeating life with your memories of the past?” She goes on to theorize that they’ve “probably become forgetful, hazy feelings, as if you’re watching a dream, protecting your mind.” She knows of no reliable past and has no evidence that she was born or grew up.
(Figure 2)
With this lack of history she then goes on to threaten Kusanagi holding her at gun point in hopes of ending the tormented loop. It’s in this scene that I feel as though it shows how far a person is willing to go if they are driven by the need to know their history and backed into a corner of uncertainty. Oshii creates these kildren, without a sense of history, causing characters to react through destructive and self-destructive actions. This includes smoking, homicide, and unquestioningly going into war.
A need for the past to be felt by the characters is created, which intrigues us, the viewers, to want to understand what has happened. None of the kildren are born with the knowledge of their past lives. All they have is the information given by the people around them which gives them a compilation of their own history, but nothing which can be compared to their own experience. Though through this way, they are able to create a first time experience, building on the character’s own primary past experiences. With the absence of information, one only has the sense of history, which will present those without a history a presence of alienation. Now, knowing the characters are without a solid history, I believe that their only option is to create history in the present. It is only in this way that they are able to have a history, which is to be able to make it in the moment. They must use all the information provided as they live now, in their current life, to create real memories in order for it to become their history. This seems like the only truth that they are able to live by.
“Sky Crawlers neglects to have a lot of definitive information about the history. The director, Oshii, has a lot of inferences into what might have happened in the past, but nothing can be directly known that it had happened. Instead we are given some information in order to make our own assumptions. As the movie starts out we are shown a fierce sky battle with names such as “Teacher” thrown out to us. We are unaware of who these people are, why they are fighting, and who are the good guys and bad guys. We are neglected a lot of information, which eventually we find the answers to our questions. When Yuichi first comes in contact with Kusanagi, he asks her a lot of questions, which to our dismay, do not receive any answers. It is then seen throughout the movie that these questions are slowly answered by inferences from different sources. We again are able to see the absence of information to the characters and viewers. A big neglect of information is the “kildren” characters. Throughout the movie, they are mentioned multiple times, but Oshii wanted the viewers to figure it out with many hints and doesn’t allow us to have more information until the end into what they really are, although we still don’t have an exact description of what they are. What we have is more of an idea of what the kildren are, rather than knowledge of exactly what they are. The movie lacks a lot of information, which forces the viewers to think and come up with our own answers to the questions while giving us pieces of information along the way.
A main distinct characteristic of the movie which I had noticed is the background music, or should I say the lack of background music. In the movie, background music seems to play sporadically throughout the movie. Although it isn’t unusual to have music play in the background of a movie, I had noticed that it only played in certain instances and only plays for a short duration. In this way, I took a bit of time and looked at the scenes and believe that the background music is a reflectance of their emotions. This idea comes from the relation of the kildren’s lack of history and the movie’s lack of background music. It’s through this that I believe that these two are related.
Though as they live, the background music represents their memories being created into history. Within the movie, the background music can be seen to represent a moment in which emotions have been elevated to a level of history not due to its absence but its familiar feel. The soundtrack of the movie is an important substance for the movie as a whole, “Film sound-taken as a single complex unit rather than three or more separate components-cannot be under stood without analyzing relationships among sound track components.”(Cooper) This shows that the soundtrack, upon multiple levels, contain a mass amount of information which supports the overall film. Due to the quality and timing of the soundtrack significance, quantity of the soundtrack isn’t needed, which is why we are presented with so many moments of absence of background music. As their way of life revolves around a non-history, all they are able to depend on is the emotion at the moment and their instances of living creating history in the moment. These instances are moments of heightened emotions, which can be reflected to the background music. In summary, the kildren are first presented with a lack of history and information, thus they having nothing to build on. Assuming that the background music is a reflectance of their history, this is why there is no background music for a lot of the film. The kildren first have a heightened moment of almost-memory, and then after, this moment is amplified for the viewers by the background music as they react to live in the current moment. In these moments where they are living in the moment, they are actually creating their own history for their current self.
In the first scene of the whole movie, right after the plane fight, we are able to hear the slowly intricate background music by Kenji Kawai. It sounds as though there is a complexity, which we later find within the twist of kildren within the story. This is what we are presented as we step into the world of skycrawlers. In the scene when Yuichi is gone and Kusanagi goes to his room, she seems to feel lonely or sad by the absence of Jinroh, Yuichi’s former self. As this scene begins with her outside the door, we suddenly hear the of the background music. This is a big difference from the usual silence that we hear through the movie, which signifies that this is an important and most likely an emotional moment. In a later scene, right after we learn of Teacher and how he is a man, we see that Kusanagi is going pilot a plane. This is the first instance and only instance in which she is piloting a plane. Within the beginning of this scene, the background music begins slowly and then increases in volume and tones. To me, it feels as though history is being created for Kusanagi. It’s almost as though the music is portraying her inner ambition to create change and as the music plays, it reveals her actions, motives,
(Figure 3)
and emotions at this time. Within the movie, it is seen that music plays only in moments that seem critically emotional or might be of importance.
There are many moments in which there are also imitations of background music and sounds which lead to having a history, but not in the sense of emotions deferred into history. Following the previous concept of background music’s connection to history, there are many other moments within the movie which causes memory training through repetition in the background music or sounds in general to be remembered in history. What I am referring to is the direct sounds created by the characters, and not the unseen background music that is experienced being incorporated into history. If we think about it, history isn’t just emotions but is also a series of memories. In many scenes within the movie, there are sounds that either try to imitate the background music of history or try to create their own sounds of history. In substitution of the lack of background soundtrack, the movie seems to have a lot of diegetic sounds. “Gorbman’s pithy definitions of diegesis as the ‘narratively implied spatiotemporal world of the action and characters’ and diegetic music as that issues from a source within the narrative.”(Winters) From this, it is possible to see that the diegetic sounds within the movie is a rich source of information. The way the sounds try to condition us is through repetition, creating for the viewers a sense of history through these other sounds. One such force of background music repetition would be the low rumbling of the planes. The low rumbling of the planes seems to create its own background music within the movie. It’s as if within the reality of the movie, Oshii is trying to have the characters create their own history, which wouldn’t be too crazy of an idea since the kildren had been associated to flying since we are first introduced to them. The low humming of the planes might be the movie’s attempt for the kildren to have their own sense of history and allows the viewers to see the process too. Another instance of the movie trying to create their own essence of background music and history is the scene when they are in the car driving to the brothel house.
(Figure 4)
The radio playing in the background tries to create its own atmosphere of background music, trying to set the mood. The radio’s music is trying to create a sense of history for the characters riding in the car. Aside from the music coming from the radio, there are also some other sounds coming from equipment or something else, but since in the movie they make a noise, they are an important attribute to the story. “The sound makes one think about the object because the object is recognized through the sound; but only rarely might the object…itself evoke the sound.”(Argyropoulos) This sound which causes us to be conditioned would be the opening of bottles, flickering of matches, or sparks from a wielder. These are the digetic sounds that I was referring to.
(Figure 5)
There are many other objects that can make sounds in the background, but it is only the important ones that make a sound and is recognized by the characters which are built into their present history.
Without history it is hard for a person to know who they are which would create for them a sense of alienation. It is within the movie “Sky Crawlers” that the character kildren are born and reborn without definite history. It is within this lack of history that the kildren feel as though they need to find their history. The movie is very vague in information distributed and tries to have us figure what is going in the movie. Within the background music, one is able to tell the emotions in the instance elevating to a level of history. Aside from the background music, there are also other sounds that attribute to the characters sense of history. In this movie the characters are alienated due to the absence of information about their history.
WORKS CITED
Argyropoulos, Erica. Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema(Review). Notes. Vol. 64. (June 2008)
Cooper, David. Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound (Review). Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. Vol. 3.1 (Spring 2009)
Winters, Ben. "The Non-Diegetic Fallacy: Film, Music, and Narrative Space." Music and Letters Vol 91. (May 2010)
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