It's impossible to talk about Mamoru Oshii's Avalon without mentioning The Matrix--because the comparison shows the difference between popular culture and popular art. Both films deal with a reliance on mediated realities, and both present their characters a choice between the uncertainty of "real" life and the pacifying order of a controlled environment. But where The Matrix and its sequels are sterile and contradictory, attacking the very hyper-reality in which they themselves traffic, Avalon is a strangely lyrical evocation of Planet Playstation that ultimately manages to stop chasing its tail long enough take a firm stand. It may be a little underwritten and not entirely coherent, but its image-making facility and analytical provocations allow it to rise well above the virtual pack.

The film is set in a future not so much nightmarish as sucked dry--a sepia-tinted nowhere land of identical apartment blocks and dingy corner restaurants. No wonder that its inhabitants are willing to subject themselves to the illegal VR game Avalon, which drops you in the middle of a combat zone and lets you fight your way out; there's the little matter of the few who wind up "unreturned," but given the world they live in, it's a small risk to take. This brings us to the matter of our heroine, Ash (Malgorzata Foremniak), the lonerish number-one player of the game; seeking the unknown, she hears rumours of "Special A," or, "Class Real," a level that promises greater challenges than the game she can do her in her sleep. But getting there--and maintaining her superior position against an upstart named Murphy (Jerzy Gudejko)--will be difficult, and require much following of loose ends.

An ordinary director would have fallen into The Matrix's trap of becoming entranced with the imagery it's supposed to be critiquing, but there's no mistaking Oshii's future imperfect for errant thrills--even the Avalon game is dingy, dirty, and unromantic, looking more like the ugly world outside than a supercool exercise in "bullet time." While there's much bland intrigue as to whether the cipher Ash will maintain her position and break through to Special A, it's like two prisoners arguing over the top bunk--it's something done to pass the time in a controlled environment. Thus, "Class Real" becomes the promise of something more real than real--suggesting that much of the oppressive landscape is the self-inflicted injury of people who cannot imagine a better place for themselves.

True, there are problems with this narrative, which often threatens to disappear into a digital fog like one of its unreturned players. Ash isn't defined as much more than a game player--her only personality traits are that she's "the best" and owns an adorable basset hound. (She's like part of the game and the landscape already.) And while Oshii does a brilliant job of evoking the soft-focus and sepia world of the game and its players, it becomes a little hard to bear at times, creating an aesthetic ice-cream headache that comes with pushing too much detail-packed imagery too fast. But despite these problems, the film is extremely provocative--especially once Class Real becomes a factor and it wipes the memory of Avalon's world from the screen. The oppressiveness of Oshii's world is close to our own if we don't poke our heads outside our plastic cocoons, giving the film a frisson that cuts deeper than a certain other film on the same theme.

Miramax's DVD release of Avalon does its creators proud. Letterboxed at 1.85:1 and enhanced for 16x9 televisions, the film's saturated sepia palette practically oozes off the screen and into your living room. If there's a bit of a problem with muddiness during scenes of extreme darkness, it's all of a piece with the sticky colours afforded by the visuals. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (in the original Polish as well as dubbed English and French variations--needless to say, stick with the first option), meanwhile, is close to flawless, rendering a vast array of sound elements with complexity and imagination; every footfall and metallic clank is at once easy to spot and harmonious with the rest of the track. The use of the surround channels is also extremely creative, making gunfire or other mobile sound streak from the front speakers to the back in unexpected combinations.

The few extras are also more impressive than those of much higher-profile titles. "The Special FX of Avalon" (47 mins.) is an astoundingly thorough examination of the processes involved with regards to the film's enormous number of digital effects: various department heads (largely FX supervisor Nobuaki Koga) recount the arduous task of bringing the illusions to life, and the hugely complex undertaking will dispel the common notion that digital imaging is somehow easier than traditional optical effects. Though an interview with director Mamoru Ishii (21 mins.) is somewhat less exciting, there are interesting tidbits to be gleaned here from his early life as a movie fiend and complacent student radical to his preference of dogs over humans and his concern with the group over the individual. Selections from his other films might have made this more edifying, but it's still an interesting interview. Studio propaganda for Miramax's "new golden age" (nice try, Harvey) rounds out the disc.-Travis Hoover