The Ceremony

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!

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.

Nagisa Oshima, Japanese cinema's enfant terrible, introduces us to a dangerously nuclear family of alleged war criminals, communists, sex offenders and radical right-wingers, plus a former baseball pitcher and a katana-wielding cop thrown in apparently just for the sheer hell of it. Together, they comprise a mutual aberration society that milks dry the psychic stress and anguish of weddings and funerals. Is their shock-horror behavior offer convincing criticism of postwar Japanese society? Oshima leans into exploitation to score his points, but the net result sometimes smacks of "Mondo Cane" shockumentaries.

Thankfully, there are built-in safety valves when incest, loathing and degradation turn from dark to jet black. That's when some characters break out in honest laughter over their extended family's antics. In any case, it's a fine and foreboding warmup for Oshima's legendary topper, "In the Realm of the Senses."

I have seen this film in the late eighties, together with other Oshima's movies and I could collect only a vague impression of exoticism. This before I visited Japan, where I currently live.

I have seen it again last night and I can confirm that "Gishiki" portrays some of the most specific aspects of the Japanese culture. It is a movie deeply ingrained with the rebellion against traditional culture and family, which is typical of the late sixties-early seventies, not only in Japan, but also in Europe. The same can be said of the use of sexuality as a powerful device to offset the established values.

The powerful Sakurada clan is brought to ruin by the same force that keeps it together, the powerful grandfather. This happens in a sequence of rigidly choreographed family reunions, in occasions of funerals and weddings spanning several years following the end of the world. In this sense the world of the Sakuradas is so traditional that many scenes could be set in medieval Japan, with minor modifications in the dialogs and costumes. Ritual suicides and uncompassioned sex are recurring estranging events which follow and precede these ceremonies.

At the end what has been taken away from the protagonist is his very childhood, and hence his possibility to exist as a human being.

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.