Angel's Egg

If you have religious trauma, specifically with Christianity though it also applies to other religions, you're going to love this. Major spoilers ahead.

Movie Inspirations

Mamoru Oshii was a devout christian, even going as far as to almost join a seminary, when he suddenly lost faith. One of the main themes of this film is how to deal with faith in a bleak world. Oshii uses christian imagery, such as the nameless boy I'll refer to as Jesus, bearing a cross, the fact that the world they're on is shaped like Noah's ark, the use of noah's ark as the world's backstory, and the honoring of the main girl who is also nameless as a saint. Duriboh on Youtube pointed out that the imagery of the world is similar to many paintings like Zdidslaw Beksinski, a surrealist painter who uses religious imagery and leaves much of the interpretation up to the viewer, similar to this movie. I wouldn't say they're exact copies but they give off very similar vibes.

Here's a link to Beksinski's work because he's lowkey underrated LINK

The Fisherman

The fisherman, the remnants of the world the flood killed, cursed to chase and fail to capture after imaginary fish around a desolate world. The fisherman represents both the blind devotion and destruction religion can cause. The fish are shadows, they're out of place but not dangerous or harmful, yet the fisherman continue to go after the fish almost like colonization and how that was justified. The fisherman leave a trail of broken windows and destroyed property wherever they go. They're a great way to showcase a side effect of mass faith.

Noah's Ark

To quote the guriguri blog, "Noah sends a dove to fly and bring back a part of the land. But the dove never came back. They waited and waited, hoping and believing that the dove would come back, until they turned to stones." It's symbolic that they live on this ark too, as it's revealed at the end, that they were still on their journey with faith and that god is still watching humanity, testing it.

The Egg

The egg is faith. The angel's entrust this nameless little girl with the egg supposed to hatch the bird to signal to Noah it's time for him, and therefore god, to return. The girl, full of naivety, sets out to bring it to the heart of this world. Along the way she encounters knockoff Jesus (I'll get into him later). The man's mission is to smash the egg, to show the girl that her faith is useless and so he does. When he breaks the egg he finds it empty, empty of no bird, and sets back out to wear he came from. When the girl drowns her breath, her undying faith, spawns the creation of even more eggs, one of which results in the bird, to fly overhead to signal to god to return. I think the egg is a good way to show that faith can be empty and void of actual substance and yields no results for some but for others is a force of change and upheaval from a grim life. The original egg is representative of the first kind of faith. Blindly clinging onto a belief, actively witnessing what that faith brings (the fisherman) and still subscribing to it. However when the girl takes that faith and acts on it, submitting herself wholly to it, she creates the bird. This isn't to say that you should wholly submit yourself to faith, after all that's what the fisherman have done, or completely back away from faith as knock off Jesus has done, rather it's an exploration of how faith impacts people and the world around them and leaves the viewer to take their lesson from it.

There are also the massive eggs housing some sort of creature. I'll be honest and say I'm not sure what to make of it, I'd love to hear different interpretations.

Knock-Off Jesus and The Little Girl

We're introduced to Knock-off Jesus when he strolls in on a massive, red, car, clearly from a far away land, tanned skin, bearing a weapon in the shape of a cross, and bandages tied to the palms of his hands. I think this is subtle commentary on colonization. Many colonizers will arrive in religious symbol with advanced technology, promising peace and salvation, while thinly veiling their true intent to destroy. Knock-off Jesus' mission from the beginning is clear, to spread his message. He represents anti-faith (like a reverse Jesus). He is however not a villain. He gives the girl kindness, shelters her, keeps her safe when the fisherman begin barreling past them to chase the shadows. Throughout the film he asks what the egg is, trying to understand faith, the girl can't give him an answer because she doesn't trust him. At the end, trying to free the little girl he formed a bond with from her blinding faith, he shatters the egg, then walks off to go back to where he came from. He ends the movie looking at a machine god, a man-made god, and the girl honored as a saint, with a swarm of feathers surrounding him. He still doesn't believe.

I also think it's telling that a mass of eggs popped up after the girl died. People tend to rally around symbols of faith. After the girl died we see her memorialized as a statue, implying she's a saint. To give a brief overview of what I covered in the egg section, the girl represents the naivety people have in faith, the blind clinging to faith, and the reward faith can bring. As she's drowning she sees a grown up version of herself, I believe that was 1, her seeing her would-be life flash before her eyes, and 2, represents what she had to sacrifice for her faith. As the director pointed out in an interview, even though one of the birds hatched an egg, how do we know the bird didn't die at sea? That the bird decided to skip over the ark? We only have faith that the bird brang god.

The Angel Itself