Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ) is a sci-fi movie by Yoshiura Yasuhiro. It was originally released in theaters in Japan in 2013 following the beginning portion of the film being released as 4 ONA's in 2012.
Patema lives in a city build underground, where the inhabitants do not see the surface of their planet and scavenge the labrinthine tunnels and corridors for supplies. Yet, for a group of long time underground dwellers they remain optimistic and healthy. Patema dreams of the outside world, due in large part to a man she is very close to named Lagos. Lagos would go on trips into forbidden regions of their underground warren and bring back gifts, images and stories of the surface world. Patema decides to see that world for herself after Lagos has been missing for a few years. Her guardians warn her of the dangers of following in her footsteps, trying to scare her with tales of batmen who walk on the ceiling and kidnap anyone they see. She then encounters one of them and in her terror falls off of a catwalk into the abyss. Much to her surprise and terror the hole she fell into leads to the surface world she has dreamed about. Yet for unknown reasons her gravity is reversed from this world and the open blue sky holds nothing but a terror of oblivion and death. She clings to a chain-link fence, faced with a fall into the nothingness of the sky, and is saved by a bewildered boy named Age who helps her to safety inside a nearby store room. He wonders at her terror of the sky, not understanding the feeling of having nothing to stand on, as she clings to the top of the door jam peering into the blue depths. Age promises that he will get her back to her people, the inverted, as he calls them. Age lives in a totalitarian and technologically advanced city that preaches about people long ago who's gravity inverted being sinners punished for their crimes and were thrown into the sky. The leader of the city discovers Patema's existence and does everything he can to destroy her and her people.
I really enjoyed this movie. It was fresh, inventive and well paced. The concept while not original is well done and entertaining. Not a lot of peripheral story is explained in the movie which clocks in at just over 90 minutes. But you get a great picture of the motivations and personalities of all of the major characters so that's not a detriment. Half of the fun of the story is to figure out what world is the correct one and who is right. The other half is to see if our protagonists will overcome their adversity. This is a classic anti-authority story that is easily recognizable. English lit majors can pick all sorts of literary symbolism out of this story and not be disappointed with its by the book story telling. This is an enjoyable, well done and engrossing film that is for all audiences. Once again Yoshiura brings humanism to the generally sterile worlds of cyberpunk sci-fi. This one is a bit more fantasy than cyberpunk though and has more action than any of his other stories. He focuses less on human interactions as the main point of the story. This proves he can make a blockbuster style feature film and should be doing more work of this scale. My one complaint would be the character designs, they were a bit bland and not of the life like style that Yoshiura has gone with previously. Maybe I enjoyed it as much as I did because it had some of the same feeling to it as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time did.
The film is available in North America on BluRay and DVD in both subtitled and dubbed format.
Patema lives in a city build underground, where the inhabitants do not see the surface of their planet and scavenge the labrinthine tunnels and corridors for supplies. Yet, for a group of long time underground dwellers they remain optimistic and healthy. Patema dreams of the outside world, due in large part to a man she is very close to named Lagos. Lagos would go on trips into forbidden regions of their underground warren and bring back gifts, images and stories of the surface world. Patema decides to see that world for herself after Lagos has been missing for a few years. Her guardians warn her of the dangers of following in her footsteps, trying to scare her with tales of batmen who walk on the ceiling and kidnap anyone they see. She then encounters one of them and in her terror falls off of a catwalk into the abyss. Much to her surprise and terror the hole she fell into leads to the surface world she has dreamed about. Yet for unknown reasons her gravity is reversed from this world and the open blue sky holds nothing but a terror of oblivion and death. She clings to a chain-link fence, faced with a fall into the nothingness of the sky, and is saved by a bewildered boy named Age who helps her to safety inside a nearby store room. He wonders at her terror of the sky, not understanding the feeling of having nothing to stand on, as she clings to the top of the door jam peering into the blue depths. Age promises that he will get her back to her people, the inverted, as he calls them. Age lives in a totalitarian and technologically advanced city that preaches about people long ago who's gravity inverted being sinners punished for their crimes and were thrown into the sky. The leader of the city discovers Patema's existence and does everything he can to destroy her and her people.
I really enjoyed this movie. It was fresh, inventive and well paced. The concept while not original is well done and entertaining. Not a lot of peripheral story is explained in the movie which clocks in at just over 90 minutes. But you get a great picture of the motivations and personalities of all of the major characters so that's not a detriment. Half of the fun of the story is to figure out what world is the correct one and who is right. The other half is to see if our protagonists will overcome their adversity. This is a classic anti-authority story that is easily recognizable. English lit majors can pick all sorts of literary symbolism out of this story and not be disappointed with its by the book story telling. This is an enjoyable, well done and engrossing film that is for all audiences. Once again Yoshiura brings humanism to the generally sterile worlds of cyberpunk sci-fi. This one is a bit more fantasy than cyberpunk though and has more action than any of his other stories. He focuses less on human interactions as the main point of the story. This proves he can make a blockbuster style feature film and should be doing more work of this scale. My one complaint would be the character designs, they were a bit bland and not of the life like style that Yoshiura has gone with previously. Maybe I enjoyed it as much as I did because it had some of the same feeling to it as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time did.
The film is available in North America on BluRay and DVD in both subtitled and dubbed format.
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