Oshima Nagisa’s film The Ceremony begins in the middle of a
conversation. The narrator and principle
character, Masuo is speaking on the telephone. It is unclear who Masuo is
speaking to and what exactly is going on. After hanging up the phone Masuo
steps out into the street and begins to talk to a woman. Masuo has received a
telegram from his cousin Terumichi and it appears to be urgent that Masuo
travels to meet him. The woman, Ritsuko, also wants to go to Terumichi and they
make travel plans. It is insinuated that Ritsuko and Masuo are relatives, later
it is revealed that they are cousins, but also half-brother and sister. In a
voice-over Masuo admits to being in love with Ritsuko, but Terumichi stands
between them. In present time the story takes place over the time it takes
Masuo and Ritsuko to travel to Terumichi. However, the film also consists of a
series of long flashbacks narrated by Masuo. All the flashbacks concern
different family ceremonies that took place over the course of Masuo’s life.
Each ceremony reveals to the audience more and more about Masuo’s strange and
complicated family history, one that is full of incest and suicide.
Masuo and Ritsuko
The first flashback concerns the
ceremony of the first anniversary of Masuo’s father’s death. Masuo and his mother
had just returned from Manchuria, repatriating to Japan after World War II. When
they hear about Masuo’s father’s death they decide to return to Manchuria,
however the father’s family, the Sakurada’s catch them and bring them back.
Masuo is then thrown into the chaos of his father’s family, the complexity of
which being shown in each proceeding ceremony. The subsequent ceremonies are
the funeral of Masuo’s mother, the wedding of Masuo’s communist uncle, Masuo’s own
arranged wedding in which the bride did not show up, and the funeral of Masuo’s
grandfather, the tyrannical patriarch of the Sakurada family.
The film ends back in present time.
Masuo and Ritsuko have made it to Terumichi’s house, but Terumichi has
committed suicide, believing that with his death the Sakurada line dies.
Ritsuko tells Masuo to go or he will miss his boat, intending to stay behind
and kill herself next to her lover. Masuo leaves Terumichi’s house distraught
and begins to imagine that he is playing baseball with his cousins like they
used to do when they were young. The film ends with Mesuo’s ear to the ground,
listening for the sound of his long dead baby brother, who had been buried
alive by the Russians in Manchuria, something he does throughout the film.
Ending Shot
Although the content of the film is
nonlinear and often unsettling, the filming itself stands in contrast as being
surprisingly traditional. The most striking things about the actual production
are the use of dark colors and shadows and the discordant soundtrack. The shots
used in the film aren’t particularly radical. The film makes use of many
different kinds of shots. The camera will take close-up shots of characters
that are speaking, but will more often employ wide shots.
Wide Shot (also another instance in which Masuo listens for his brother)
There are several tracking shots throughout the film.
There were several moments where the camera cut suddenly to something else
accompanied by the music ending abruptly that often created a sense of
confusion. Throughout the film it almost felt like the director was using the
familiar filming techniques in order to trick the audience into thinking they
were watching a more traditional film. So, whenever the camera would cut
quickly or something unsettling happened it would be so much more startling and
disconcerting because it would feel so unexpected.
The film also often used many
symmetrical shots which is reminiscent of other Japanese directors, such as Ozu
Yasujirō. There are often scenes that show members of the Sakurada family
sitting and facing each other during ceremonies, these scenes closely mirror
scenes from the Ozu film Tokyo Story,
in which family members also gather for special occasions and are seen sitting
facing each other.
Shot from Ozu's Tokyo Story
Shot from The Ceremony
It is interesting to compare this film to a film such as Tokyo Story in the ways that both
approach the topic of family. In Tokyo
Story, the family is shown as something that is sacred. The audience is
supposed to feel resentment towards the children who treat their parents badly
and admire Noriko who treats the parents well even though they are not her own.
However, as even Tokyo Story subtly implies, there is
more to every family than meets the eye.
There was a reason Shige didn’t have an idyllic relationship with her
parents; her father was an alcoholic and her mother didn’t take care of the
family efficiently so Shige had to even as a child. While Tokyo Story seems to imply that we should look past those things
and appreciate family, The Ceremony
forces us to see the Sakurada family’s dirty secrets in such shocking manners
that an audience couldn’t possibly forget.
If Tokyo Story is supposed to make us better appreciate and have
respect for the family, then The Ceremony
serves as a way to expose the idea of family’s idyllic façade. In The Ceremony it is said that relatives
are people “who do not see each other except on weddings or funerals.” Masuo is
only shown with his extended family during funerals or weddings, and likewise
for many people they only get a sense of familial bonding during similar
“ceremonies.” The idea of family itself could be seen as just a ritual, another
ceremony. For some people, there relatives are just the people they spend time
with because they have to or because it’s expected of them, and the bond goes
no further than that. The Ceremony
seeks to destroy the notion that family ties are sacred and reveals them to be
superficial.
The
Ceremony doesn’t just seek to expose the idea of family as superficial, but
also to show the emptiness of all family tradition and lineage. The Sakurada
family is obsessed with tradition; it is telling that the only moments the
family is ever seen all together is during weddings or funerals. Even Masuo and
Ritsuko, though they live in the same city, don’t see each other for ten years
except for their grandfather’s funeral. They gather at these special times to
make it appear as though they are a real family, when in reality their
relationships with each other are very cold and distance.
At the grandfather’s funeral it is
apparent that the ceremony lacks any true emotional depth. Masuo is in charge
of putting it together, and instead of the funeral being a moment in which he
can properly mourn his grandfather’s death, it is just a duty. Masuo feels like
he owes it to the family to put together a good funeral service. In the
voiceover narration Masuo says he “was like a machine.” During the funeral
itself Masuo describes how the guests at the party try to set up Masuo as the
successor of his grandfather. These are not the actions of true mourners; the
funeral is just a mandatory tradition they must follow while they seek to
reestablish the roles of the family, not truly caring about the individual
family members. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Masuo, who lies on
the floor and says that he is being buried. This recalls the fate of his younger brother who was buried alive. In the beginning of the film it is said that since his brother is dead Masuo must take the place of two sons. Now Masuo must take the place of his grandfather, but feels he is usffering the same fate as his brother. Masuo is being buried, buried by
the expectations of his family to continue its lineage and preserve its
traditions.
Masuo "Buried"
The clearest moment in the film of
how far the family will go to preserve its traditions is Masuo’s wedding scene.
Masuo is supposed to be married at the will of his grandfather. Yet, the bride
does not show up, claiming a ruptured appendix. However, the grandfather
insists they continue with the wedding, as the “important members of the
families are both present. It is more important that the families put on a
show, than that the ceremony is sincere. After this announcement that the
wedding will take place without the bride the ceremony takes place.
The scene can be seen from 1:26:54 to 1:33:28
The wedding ceremony is elaborate
and beautiful, yet it is also strange and off-putting because Masuo is
performing it alone, often besides an empty chair. These empty spaces underline
the emptiness of the entire ceremony.
Masuo with an empty stool where the bride should be
The strangest part about the
ceremony is that, although the bride is not there the people performing the
ceremony and the family members act as if she is. They pretend she is there
taking part in each activity. At one point they even act as if she leaves the
ceremony to change her dress and force a mortified Masuo to escort a
non-existent bride back to the table. These moments force the audience to
remember that something is missing.
It is also interesting to note the
way that the runaway bride is described. It is said that “she is a perfect and
pure Japanese girl” and bad customs from other countries have not at all rubbed
off on her. The camera slowly pans towards Masuo’s face as this is being said
showing a stony expression. He knows this is all a façade and he is beginning
to tire of it.
Pan Towards Masuo
Masuo realizes that this “perfect and pure Japanese girl” does
not exist and her absence in the film also shows the audience that she does not
exist. This shows just how ridiculous the notion is that Masuo must continue
this perfect Japanese lineage and tradition, when in reality it doesn’t really
exist. Masuo himself isn’t even pure Japanese; he says at the beginning of the
film that he is a Manchurian, born in Manchuria. The whole implication of the
ceremony is a farce.
However, the film isn’t just about
the superficiality of the Sakurada family, but serves as an overreaching of
Japanese society after World War II. At the end of the wedding ceremony another
of Masuo’s cousin, Tadashi, the only one to criticize the ceremony and a far
right nationalist sympathizer, tries to break up the ceremony by reading an “outline
plan of the reorganization of the new Japan” Tadashi is quickly stopped and
subsequently murdered. Anything presented to disrupt the held social order and tradition,
such as Tadashi’s far right ideas, are soon suppressed by the elder generation.
The
Ceremony reveals the stagnant position of Japan after World War II to an
audience living in that period. Japan after World War II can be seen in this
film as being represented by the four cousins, Masuo, Ritsuko, Terumichi, and
Tadashi. Japan is stuck between adhering to old tradition and speaking out
against a corrupt past. The cousins, the younger generation, want to move ahead
from their past, break away from the family, but the elder generation makes it
difficult for them. Japan is in a similar position. Japan is caught between
honoring old tradition and breaking free from the shaky past. The Ceremony serves as a critique
towards tradition. The old rituals are meaningless. They are nothing more than
a show put on to keep up appearances; they are meaningless to the younger
generation and often even to the older generations. These traditions are not
undertaken sincerely and therefore carry no meaning.
The
Ceremony also serves as a way to criticize the idea of Japanese purity. As was mentioned before, there is an idea of
the pure, perfect Japanese girl, but as the film insinuates, that girl does not
exist. In The Ceremony the way that
the family keeps its pure lineage is by incest. The film makes fun of the idea
of having a pure lineage and points out the ludicrousness of trying to keep a
pure lineage, or a pure society. It is impossible for any country that wants to
produce a healthy society to completely shun or show prejudice against outside
influences.
However, even if The Ceremony critiques tradition it
acknowledges that breaking away from tradition is not easy. Tadashi is killed
for trying to speak out against old ideas. Terumichi and Ritsuko try to escape
the family, but cannot and so commit suicide. Terumichi says himself in his
suicide note that the reason he killed himself was to end the Sakurada line.
Terumichi's Suicide
Masuo is the only one left, perhaps surviving because he was a Manchurian, and
not a pure Japanese Sakurada like the others. Yet, even though Masuo escapes
falling into the trap of the family expectations and is able to live past them,
he does not fully escape. The film ends with Masuo having a hallucination of a
scene from his childhood, playing baseball with his aunt and cousins.
Hallucination
Even if
Masuo has escaped his past, he cannot let it go. There is still a sense of
longing for the old ways, despite everything that has happened to him. This is
nostalgia at its worst and it happens not just to individuals like Masuo, but
to whole societies, such as Japan. Despite knowing the faults people still
continue to have nostalgic yearnings for the past. This is the idea that The Ceremony seems to convey, although
old tradition is often empty and meaningless, we are still drawn to it.
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