I Suppose I Am Kildren
Almost six whole years after I first posted about it here I finally got a copy of Sky Crawlers on DVD.
Yes, it's very much a Mamoru Oshii movie. It's got characters walking around in existential hazes, realism that makes you wonder why it isn't live-action, and even a basset hound. While there is action--in deadly earnest--it isn't an action movie. The setting is both real and unreal, and the themes of his previous movies are taken in a different direction.
Basically, this is ONE scene from CATCH-22 transformed into an entire feature movie. Where in the Heller work (and the movie that came from it) the scene was played for satirical effect, in this case the concept's tragic meaning is thrown to full relief.
FP (who is wrestling with the existential ramifications himself)