Tonight, I was browsing the copious movies downloaded to the household harddrive and while my guy spent his time in the living room watching racing, I spent time in my room watching an old anime movie I'd heard about but never got around to seeing:
Night on the Galactic Railroad
It's a neat little mind-screw (still trying to figure out the depth of the symbolism). It's set in a world of cat-people. The protagonist is a boy (cat-boy) who lives in quaint little village bullied at school save by one good friend. (I thought it was an Italian village, but then I looked up the work online and found out the signage is all in Esperanto, not Italian). The cat-boy, Giovanni, strays away from the village festival and his errand to pick up milk for his ill mother, falls asleep in a field and, in his dreams, boards a mystical train that takes him and his best friend to various places and dimensions along the Milky Way.
I'd give it a 9/10 because it is actually really a beautiful story once you let it sink in, and a hell of a tearjerker, too.
The pacing is a bit slow at first. I chalk it up to being both an anime and just the style of the movie - it's slow and dreamlike and it doesn't seem like it's even trying to make a whole lot of sense on the surface.
There's some interesting religious symbolism in it. I'm trying to figure out if one got "zinged" or not. There's this theme of "trying to get to the True Heaven" and the End of the Universe going on with the space-train. The cat-boy and his best friend meet three (human!) passengers of the Titanic, a pair of children and their rather devout Christian tutor. They get off at a station called the Southern Cross which is supposedly "The Christian Heaven" but not the "True Heaven." However, the "True Heaven" winds up being a black hole/void space... I don't know whether this was a Buddhist thing and a simple comparasion between ideas of Nirvana/Paradise or what... I mean, if it was a "zing," it certainly was a gentle one as the Christian characters weren't portrayed as stupid at all, and were very nice. The tutor pretty much echoes what turns out to be the ending theme of the movie in his own words and the older girl actually gives the main-character the main aesop he holds onto in the end verbatim before getting off at their stop. And they seemed to be happy there, so even if they "didn't make it to the end of the universe," they still seemed to make it to a place that they wanted to be in. (Even if it was portrayed as a little cheesy).
In the end, all around, there is this lesson about making the most of your life and living your life for the sake of other people/sharing love with others. (Given in the most hearbreaking way).