At his death in 1989, Osamu TezukaThe Manga God leaves his greatest work unfinished: Phoenix, the Bird of Fire. He offered a large anthological fresco of stories ranging from the distant past to the most futuristic horizons. Thirty years later, Shôjirô Nishimi and STUDIO4°C deliver us Phoenix : Reminiscence of Flower, a feature film that focuses on one of them and reveals the distant future of humanity...
Heat the engine without ever taking off
Time is at the colony of new worlds. Romi and George, a couple of explorers, landed on Eden17, an arid and inhospitable planet. They aim to colonize it and make it viable in the long term. However, not everything is going as planned. Romi quickly finds himself alone in this task, accompanied only by a domestic robot and her unborn child, Cain...
Starting from a rather classic incipit, the film will very quickly take unexpected detours and directions that will diametrically change the course of things. Probably too much. The film is based on a structure built like a multitude of entry points from different stories. Every time we think about getting out of the exhibition phase and seeing the story get started, the film suddenly ellipses the story. With leaps in time ranging from a few months to several centuries, the maps are constantly recast.
Characters disappear for the benefit of others, places are changing and the stakes are constantly different. The repetition of the process loses us as a spectator, drowned in the vastness of space and time. Unfortunately, this permanent destabilization is not fully assumed. With each new ellipse, the film weakens in long explanatory sequences, often dilogued in order to clarify the new situation to a character and, in extensoTo the spectator. A classic mechanics that can be forgiven when used wisely, if not in a limited way. In this case, its redundancy impoverishes its strength and harms the work in general. Each of the first fruits thus nourished ends tirelessly in fade while the film diverts its interest to other horizons.
Breathtaking images
Apart from the awkward script processing, the film offers animation sequences of rare quality and has an undeniable visual strength. Every time we discover a new place, a new character, the desire to learn more returns tirelessly. As soon as we venture into space, he demonstrates a mastery of gigantism by making the characters feel infinitely small by what surrounds them. Interstellar life is magnified, from the simple planet to the hundreds of galaxies. The animation is fluid (we will regret not being able to see the Phoenix anymore, a pleasure for the eyes) and gives the change when necessary, especially for the few successful action scenes.
Outline in infinity in 95 minutes?
However, the beauty of the film must not forget its weaknesses. The director thus seeks as much as possible to portray the universe as an immense structure. But is it only possible under the conditions of a feature film to the duration « classic » ? The original manga and its titanic ambition is tried by developing fifteen stories and has remained incomplete... How can we succeed here? Other adaptations to the cinema of works of science fiction have shown well, like those of the saga Dune. It takes time to set up such a distant universe, to appropriate its codes. Here, the film wants to do too much and misses the opportunity to let go. Hence the feeling of facing a series of stories that never begin. Perhaps it would have been preferable for adaptation to make a radical choice by taking distance from the original work in an attempt to debunk its audience.
Answers to this relative failure can also be found in its mixed format. The film also exists as a series, entitled: Eden17. (To be found on Disney+, with, in addition, an alternative end). Each story can then be contained in a different episode and propose frequent paradigm changes. The French public will still have to wait a bit for a release date in France, still unknown to date.
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