---On Angel's Egg---

Angel's Egg is a film that elegantly interweaves themes of faith, loss, aging, and death, through an abstract and apocalyptic lens. The film depicts a young girl living alone within a world laid to ruin. Fossilized carcasses, once animals, lay strewn about the landscape, decrepit machinery and ghostly cities having long since subsumed the natural world. The girl carries with her an egg, a fragile, precious object, which she appears to consider herself responsible for. She meets a lone man, a weary and aged wanderer, and the two briefly travel alongside one another. The girl encourages the man to watch over her as she waits for the egg to hatch. The man attempts to do as she asks of him and waits by her side, watching over the egg, but eventually, his impatience and curiousity get the better of him, and after a long while, he smashes open the egg. He then abandons the sleeping girl; the girl wakes up, distraught to find the egg smashed, and attempts to chase after the man, but instead finds herself falling into an endless pit filled with water. Within the water she meets an older version of herself, then disappears as if she were merely a reflection on the waves of the water, replaced with the woman. As the woman sinks deeper into the water, she exhales, causing dozens of eggs rise up out of her breath and rise to the surface. 

The egg represents a number of things at once; it reflects to the audience all the things the girl considers dear to herself that are lost over the course of the film. Primarily, it represents the girls' youth. Eggs immediately conjur to mind imagery of youth, of birth, of the cycle of all living things. Angel's Egg depicts through abstraction the girl's coming of age, when she stops being the girl, and becomes the woman.

Woven directly into this are the themes of death and faith. The egg's shattering symbolizes a death---a void created within the girls' life where a sense of purpose used to lay. Once the egg is destroyed the girl is forced to directly confront death; when she does, she is overcome with anguish, and is no longer able to consider herself the child she once was. She is no longer able to live in a world where death is a distant unknown.

Perhaps most importantly, and building atop these other thematic elements, the destruction of the egg represents a loss of faith. Loss of youth and loss of faith are phenomena which tend to go hand in hand; many children take for granted the world around them, especially as it is described by adults. Many adults imprint their faith onto their children and children accept what adults say unquestioningly. However, as children age, confront the world around them, and begin to think for themselves, many grow to disbelieve in their parents' religions. They no longer take it on faith that what religion has to say is true. This can result in quite the emotional shock; children are often left feeling adrift and isolated when they can no longer trust their religion to offer them a framework for understanding the world. In losing the egg the girl loses her youth, her sense of purpose, and her faith, and so, becomes the woman. She gives birth and then dies---thus fulfilling the cycle of life.