Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

Utena has newly arrived at Ohtori Academy. There is a strange order at the school: members of the student council duel, and whoever wins wins Anthy. Anthy is spoken of as the bride and her own will is never asked. Utena will not accept this. She takes up a sword and enters the duels; her aim is not to win but to get Anthy out of the arrangement. What the school is, who runs it and whether leaving is possible stay uncertain through the narrative. Kunihiko Ikuhara directs. The film is a retelling of the television series of the same name; the events differ from the series and the ending is separate. Its visual manner is far beyond the series: the architecture is impossible, the staircases lead nowhere and the space is built like stage scenery. The symbols the narrative uses are open; the rose, the sword and the door repeat constantly and the film does not explain them. In the last section the narrative goes entirely abstract and one of the characters turns into a car; that scene is often cited in the history of animation. The subject is leaving adolescence, and doing it by stepping outside an order somebody else built. Ikuhara's manner rests on repetition and ceremony; the same staging returns through the film with different meanings. Who it is for: viewers who like experimental animation and symbolic narratives. Who it is not for: the narrative is closed, complicated for anyone who does not know the series, and the film explains nothing.