The Ceremony

Kenzo Kawarasaki returns from Manchuria to Japan; actually, he has no memory of Japan at all. He's part of a noble clan, dominated by his severe grandfather. He falls in love with Akiko Koyama, but it turns out she's his half-sister; his grandfather raped her mother, and grandpa seems to be his actual father. So they yearn, meet at weddings and funerals, and he never does anything, either in getting an heir or accomplishing anything.

But at least he's appropriately miserable. This is, after all, a film by Nagisa Oshima, and all the evils that past generations did must be revealed and punished, even if the innocent are the ones punished.

There's not a hint of compassion here. So why did I think I had seen this before? Then it struck me. Ignoring the war crimes and rapine, this is the plot of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, their once mighty wealth brought down through a lack of get-up-and-go. But would ambition have changed anything?

This film can be hard to watch for some. The family is very dysfunctional and the head of the family will make some people cringe.

As an American born in the 1980s, I do not know what the world was like after World War II. I especially don't know what the world was like for foreign countries after World War II especially those on the opposite side of America. A movie like this, although fiction, can give a sense of the struggles a nation might face, changing after World War II.

I thought the acting was well done. I'll admit I don't recognize any of the actors from other movies and I watched the movie with subtitles, but I could not stop watching this movie until the end.

It's a mystery to me why Oshima, and especially his movie Ceremony ( although my personal favourite is Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence) doesn't get the recognition he deserves, among the greatest directors. Possibly because, apart for the famous In the realm of the senses, very few have watched his films. Ceremony, in my opinion, is his best film. It is extraordinary how he constructs the narration of this family saga, and how he makes it resonate with thoughts and feelings in every minute of it, putting in shame all of the more applauded asian family stories that became famous movies over the kast decades. But he also surpasses many acclaimed European directors of his time. Ceremony is an undisputed masterpiece that you watch shivering , a proof that cinema can be made out of pure magic!

A boy experiences traumas during WWII (which we don't see), and the subsequent 25 years of his life are a continuation of those traumas. Oshima skillfully depicts Japan's post-war evolution, and the ways the dark secrets of the past live on within the present. Gishiki is by no means an enjoyable film: the main character experiences nothing but losses, misfortunes, and humiliations. But this is a dark truth of life: anyone who lives long enough accumulates losses and failures, and for some, perhaps everything else is overtaken. In the end, the main character is left alone with nothing except his lost dreams and his endlessly repeating traumas. A very sad film, but one I'm glad to have seen.

This is the third movie of Nagisa Ôshima that i have watched, after DEATH BY HANGING and THE PLEASURES OF THE FLESH. It's not as good as DBH but it's better than the later.

First of all, it's a bit confusing. Too many characters and even worse, their complicated relationships to each other. Cousins, aunts, siblings, i get that this complication is a major theme of this movie, because as it unfolds, it's revealed that some relations are not what it seemed at first. Still, it was hard to follow.

This is a metaphor about post WW2 Japanese society, there are things whose in order to be understood completely, one should be informed about Japanese history. I am not, but still, i enjoyed this movie because it may be complicated but it's entertaining as well. Things are getting somewhat clearer after the first 20 minutes. Viewers get to know better these characters, how damaged they are, who are the victims and who are the villains. Occasionally it's like a political film but at the end of the day, this is about these specific persons, the secrets under the surface, the psychological and physical abuse of some of them, and the repercussion of their actions to each other.

There are many memorable and powerful scenes, this is an ambitious and clever movie. It's probably better than my rating suggests (this 6,9/10) but i can't rate it higher because i didn't understood occasionally what i was watching and what Oshima was trying to say.