Psycho-Pass Providence

Once more time to check our hues, ensure our crime coefficient is below 100, keep our mind calm and emotions in check, and return to the spiritual successor to Ghost in the Shell, the Sibyl System structured world of Psycho-Pass Providence.  

I’ll be honest, especially with my general aversion to watching anything via steaming, catching up with Psycho-Pass has always been an activity that’s meant I’ve always been a bit out of sync with it, though Psycho-Pass Providence is a prequel to the third season, I’m yet to watch that series and for that reason the film found in me a blank slate – as I’m generally in the dark as to what will happen, in a way that those that have watched season three may not be. I see this as a good thing.

Mysterious forces attack a boat transporting a professor whose research they want to intercept and stop from falling into the hands of the government, research which may define whether or not the eye watching everyone, the Sibyl System, is given sole power and the rule of law is to be dissolved. Entrenched in the belief that the law must work in tandem with the Sibyl System, Inspector Tsunemori and her allies seek to find the research before it can be misused.  

Honestly, trying to hone down much of the story is an interesting one because in Psycho-Pass Providence, like GitS, we find much of the narrative is grounded in both physical action and contemplative philosophy, while also having a hell of a lot going on, sometimes with limited context. Not that this is necessarily a problem per se, but it reminds me that even in GitS Stand Alone Complex, as in Psycho-Pass, they don’t always learn how the original GitS film allows its story to be stripped bare, something that for many years I was ambivalent about but now recognise as one of its defining traits, as well as it’s defining qualities. That simplicity allows all its musing and moments of action to become more potent. A bit too much can be a bit too distracting from the point.

But what of Psycho-Pass Providence? As you'd expect from the franchise and from Production IG it’s beautifully animated and designed. As it moves throughout its film world and provides glimpses into new locales, it very much starts to echo Blade Runner in its visual iconography. Not in a bad way, but I was struck by how many of the buildings that swirl up in the clouds reminded me of Blade Runner’s skyline. Equally, later in the film, our protagonists witness a parade that has hints of the one in GitS Innoence. These moments feel like loving homage rather than shameless rip-off, and of course the series itself has its own visual design, and it does not deviate from that, rather the film amps up the quality. Nevertheless, it felt a little bit like the more it moved away from its core the more it seemed to echo other works.

Otherwise, it’s the world we’ve come to know and love, and the cavalcade of characters returns, including Kogami, working for the government despite (and probably due to) his previous misdemeanours. Yet again, it’s Inspector Tsunemori that really centres the film, the story, with her ability to both act and be considered about why she is taking the actions she is. As the film opens with her speech as to why law needs to continue, this is a theme that starts to turn into the prevailing narrative, something that at first is not entirely clear – in part perhaps because the film as it opens doesn’t give us quite enough context. As I think I said about Psycho-Pass Sinners of the System, I find it hard to imagine Psycho-Pass without Tsunemori, and maybe why knowing she’s no longer central to the third season I haven’t dived into streaming fun? Who knows? Nevertheless, her characterisation is taken to an intriguing, surprising if arguably logical end.

As mentioned, some of the build-up, the absolution of law, is handled such that you can miss some of the import of what is being said, which comes very much to light as the film nears its conclusion and this for me highlights one of the weaknesses of the film, and that is that it is a film, whereas you feel the story would have benefited from a 12-episode series to really allow the concepts to bed in. It’s a common problem of transferring television to a film, unless a TV series is essentially episodic, it feels like you have bigger and better budgets, and so visually you have a treat, but have to rush what the series would have allowed you to slow burn. Also, if thinking about it from an audience perspective, anyone coming to the world of Psycho-Pass for the first time might be find it relatively accessible but also relatively opaque at the same time. Standard references and notions can be inferred – the workings of the dominators for instance - but the film does seem to assume a general level of understanding of how the world works and who these characters are, and again if anyone coming to it without having seen any of the preceding works it would work better in that slow burn TV setting, allowing the characters more space to live and breathe. I’m making a lot of this mainly because I think it’s the weakest aspect of the film as otherwise it’s a very entertaining piece of work.  

The music strives and sometimes manages to meet the sense of grandeur that occasionally the film aims for. Without ever being iconic in the way of Kenji Kawai’s music for the two GitS films is, it’s nevertheless an accomplished piece of work. Yet in a way it’s also emblematic a bit of uncertainty whether the film wants to go for epic visual impact or deep characterisation and philosophical resonance. Again, maybe this is the ‘film problem’, we expect a film to look beautiful, to be somehow more sweeping, when in a TV series we are more likely to accept a focus on the more contemplative nature of the story and the world and accept the occasional lack of polish.  

I realise I probably sound oddly negative, considering I enjoyed my 120-minutes in the world of Psycho-Pass Providence a lot. It’s a really solid film, but it’s not groundbreaking. The problem is that it is just "solid" so I'm simply frustrated that this is a film.  OK, few films are truly brilliant, in any medium. Many anime sci-fi films are really pretty middling, many live action films too, and Psycho-Pass Providence is definitely a cut above in almost all aspects of its filmmaking, it’s very well crafted. Maybe I need to stop thinking about GitS so much, but it’s hard not to, just as it is hard not to witness much of the design and have flashbacks to Blade Runner. When you have iconic imagery it’s hard not to be reminded of it – after all it’s hard to watch Blade Runner without thinking back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Everything is continuity.

It’s not the hedgehog’s dilemma but the reviewers in how Psycho-Pass Providence, if it had been a bad film, would have been easy to define but because it’s in so many ways such a polished piece of work but not exceptional makes it easy to dismiss a little bit and again I really do not mean to, I just wish for it as a film to really step up that bit further, to really smack me in the face as a cinematic entity. Maybe we should allow Mamoru Oshii to make a Psycho-Pass movie. It would be ironic, the man who is self-proclaimed in having little sympathy with people might just be the right person for it, he would allow the ending, which I thought was excellent, to really hit you like a train.

I feel like I'm still sounding negative. I suppose if anything maybe the point is that director, Naoyoshi Shiotani, should be allowed to continue to make Psycho-Pass as television and of a film something outside that world, then we might see him really soar, without the burden of narratives past.