User reviews

Another example of a film I should have watched when it came out...at least for me it would have been a quintessential teenage movie that would have changed my life, at least a bit.

Now, I see it how it is. A meandering and pandering movie about angst, depression, grief and that trendy thing in Japan, suicide - feelings I've also been through as a teenager. I cannot, however, deny the somewhat unique visual style and the powerful effect it has on the viewer. The visual style created by the camera of the very talented director Hideaki Anno - who previously directed Evangelion (similar themes in both), the set design and filming locations. From a visual standpoint, it's great, it's a must-see.

From the story's point of view, it depends on everyone. On a teenager or early 20-year-old, the story would have a much greater effect than it has on me, and that's understandable. If I think for myself from a point of view of a teenager then yeah, it's moody, enigmatic, unpredictable, cool, random...everything I would have wanted to be. And all set in Japan. The ultimate cool.

But because it's not for everyone and because it's too up its own butt I cannot appreciate it more.

This movie is closer to a character study that to a conventional story. The minimal plot we have is about a struggling director who returns to his hometown and meets a young a girl who lives in her own fantasy world and follows strict rituals seemingly just to get by every day. Their unconventional love runs its course over 30 days and sees the girl confront her deamons and the director get more involved than he wanted.

The girl is so desperately runs from her past that we would believe something extraordinary and horrible happened to her but as we find out what happened was horrible yes but all too ordinary. The main similarity between this movie and Hideaki Anno's other more famous work Neon Genesis Evangelion is that personal trauma is given subjective significance, it is shown as dramatically as it is felt. We we think of family trauma most of the time we think of the death of a loved one or serious physical/sexual abuse but as it is shown it this film verbal abuse and neglect alone can have absolutly devastating effects on a person. Despite what she tells herself the girl's family is alive she probably hasn't been touched in any way but throughtout her formative years she was insulted, blamed and compared, hasn't been given the respect or even validation as a person she deserves, which collectively let to her current state.

Anno's roots in animation are felt as the movie is beautifully shot, I especially like the contrast between the lush imagery of the girls place and the bleakness of the industrial town representing her fantasy and the outside world respectively.

Ayako Fujitani portrays madness very believably, while Shunji Iwai is subtle and precise. My only grievances are that it may be needlessly complicated and long.

I must say, I was really not expecting this film... I gave this film a view without any idea of the plot or basic info to back it up and I finished the film with an uncomfortable feeling. From a personal perspective I can assure you this isn't simply the story of a "crazy" girl and a washed out filmmaker...this is the story of a profoundly sorrowed girl and exploring how she deals with this sorrow in her day to day life. The reason she may not have jumped that ledge on the roof may very well be due to those lies she kept telling herself and her whole "ritual", she only needed someone to appreciate her and stay with her and teach her life isn't as painful as she was brought up thinking it was.

I can't believe how well fujitani played this role...As someone else mentioned, why hasn't she done more film? She was even TOO convincing in her role...I could have filled a litre of water with my tears.

The uber-emotional plot and performances aside, the visuals were equally wonderful, especially her "secret" basement filled with red umbrellas, water, and her bathtub. I haven't seen such unique and beautiful set designs for a while.

I'll wrap this up...AMAZING movie 10/10 getting a DVD copy soon, i HAVE to. You definitely HAVE to watch this movie.

I'd been waiting to see this film for nearly three years and finally I had the chance to see it. Luckily, I was not disappointed. This is truly one of the most profound films I've ever had the pleasure to watch. The plot, which I refuse to spoil, delves deeply into the human psyche and it's fragility. It's impossible to not be changed or indeliably marked after watching this true work of cinematic art. Anno's deeply psychological 'Evangelion' runs parallel to this work. Anno is intrigued and infatuated with the fragility of the human mind and the power of belonging and love. 'Ritual' shows the frailness of the human mind and how easy it is to be detached from reality. This is truly a must see film, for lovers of true cinema and lovers of life. Don't let the first 20 minutes deter you from committing to watching the movie, take it all in and the motif will begin to seep into your soul.

As far as the cinematography goes, one can't help but notice Anno's attention to detail in his construction of the motif of entrapment. Pay close attention to the use of frames and barriers; frames within frames, tunnels, mazes, labyrinths, spiral staircases all ripe for deep analysis.

This film truly renders what it is to be human. Beautiful and Essential.

If you're interested in this film, it's probably because you're a Hideaki Anno fan. This is probably his most obscure film: it only ran in a museum of photography and a few other small outlets in Japan, and in some scattered film festivals worldwide. And for good reason: this is also certainly his most self-indulgent piece so far. You wanted Anno-style work, well Shikijitsu will give it to you, but in all the bad ways as well as the good.

First, the good: the sets and cinematography are stunning. For the shooting, an entire unused building was rented out and filled with strange, colorful objects. The shapes and contrasts are beautiful: a water-filled basement inundated by blue light, a white table with four bright red phones.

There are some brilliantly original set tricks: for example, the windows on the different sides of the building are of different-colored tinted glass, so that when lightning strikes, it appears as sometimes red, sometimes blue or green. The camera work feels distinctly anime-style.

But beyond this, I felt the film didn't have much to offer. Remember the psychedelic and baffling last two episodes of Anno's Evangelion? Take those and lengthen them to 2 hours, and remove the previously established context and character development that gave them some amount of meaning. The film's entire dialogue is an abstract, mostly incomprehensible mishmash of pseudo-philosophizing about love, loneliness, the boundary between fantasy and reality, family feuds and a bunch of other random themes Anno likes to wax poetic about. It keeps flipping from one theme to another, making meaningless over-generalizations about life ("The world is filled with cruelty and malice", etc), never cohering into any kind of sensible system that I was able to understand. All this, frankly, was boring. By the end I was squirming in my seat for the thing to end.

Shikijitsu is packed with symbols that don't symbolize anything. One line that sticks particularly in my mind in this respect is a comment about train tracks: they go on forever without ever once touching, and yet they are part of a single unit. A touching, beautiful metaphor, surely --- but for what? It is never made clear what this is meant to represent. A metaphor with no referent is empty and weak, no matter how beautiful it sounds.

Shikijitsu gives the appearance of depth, but doesn't really have it. Or if it does, it was impossible to discern in the general confusion (at least for me). What's left is a beautiful, superficial film, full of angst and color.

Recommended for photography lovers or die-hard Anno fans.

This felt a good 20 to 30 minutes too long for me, which holds it back from greatness in my eyes. That being said, I still liked a good amount of this film, and there were moments throughout that were very effective and powerful.

It's clear to see it as a personal film for Hideaki Anno, and it's different to anything else I've seen from him. I think with this, he proves he can do grounded drama without the sort of sci-fi elements found in his best known movies/shows... but I just wish this had been assembled and edited to be a bit tighter, because to me, it didn't feel like it needed to be more than two hours.

When I say this movie is for "fans of poetry", I mean simply that it is for people who enjoy delving into the subtlety and brevity of thoughts, for people who enjoy symbolism and are unafraid to dive into a challenging puzzle of seemingly disjoint ideas, for people who can appreciate the fantasy in--as Anno puts it--"the ennui of everyday life".

And if you were bored by the first sentence of my review, then you're probably not the person I'm describing. If you haven't guessed, I'm trying to scare off most of the crowd. ;)

Yes, people who rely heavily on plot shouldn't bother. But I'm not saying that this film lacks in plot. On the contrary, it has one of the most complicated plots if you manage to piece it together. This is not a movie to be taken lightly, and its beauty & meaning runs not on the surface but somewhere deep beneath--as in the movie where her innermost thoughts are stashed away in the "secret basement" of a 7-story building.

I would compare this movie to Fellini, Godard and Tarkovsky--except that I generally don't like any of those directors at all. In this case, however, Hideaki Anno is able to take all the brilliant elements of those classic directors and fuse it with vivid colours, imagery, a spectacular dialogue, and phenomenal acting, which is something those European directors may have overlooked in their unidirectional approach to "New Wave" cinema back in the 60s-70s. This is a film unlike any I have ever seen, because it challenges the mind while keeping the senses alive. It can be taken either philosophically or simply as a feast for the eyes, whichever you like.

The dialogue, which I've already mentioned, bears further mentioning. Unfortunately I had to rely on the English subtitles, but even that was a work of literature. It's as if the philosophical works of Confucious, Descartes and Kant had been given a real-world, human voice. Heady stuff. And the script is expertly delivered by Ayako Fujitani in a performance that ranks up there with the best portraits of creeping madness I've ever seen.

On a final note, I just want to touch on the ending--don't worry I won't ruin a thing. I've read some criticism; apparently people have been disappointed. I admit that I, too, had been expecting something different. But now, having watched the film several times over (a requirement!), I see that the ending couldn't have been more perfect. I can't find a single flaw in this movie. 10/10.

How come none of the reviews here have mentioned bipolar disorders, manic depressive episodes, or anything of the like? For all I'm reading about the fragile human psyche and the likes I only saw a character who needed serious help and only used thinking errors to improperly cope.

Yeah there was an artistic approach but a total lack of dealing with the mental issues at hand. I only give the five stars for the decent acting and cinematography. Without at least some acknowledgment of the improper functions of her brain I can't give this movie anything better.

Ritual is without a doubt one of my favorite films of all time. Interestingly its from a from a very unexpected director.

I had seen Evangelion a few years back and thought it lacked maturity and was way too pretentious for its own good. I had heard some good things about Anno's live action work but didn't pursue it until some of my friends online came across this film and loved it.

This is the film where all the talent I thought Anno was capable of in Evangelion springs to life. This film has some of the most stunning photography I've seen, the performances are spot on, the writing is a tad on the pretentious side, but still feels very personal and is very much the voice of the director in his jaded post-anime days.

The film is subtle, beautiful and very creative. Its full of wonderful camera-work and cinematography that have a polish and subtlety lacking in his other work. If I had to complain about one thing I'd say that it drags a bit around the 1:45 mark.

One thing that surprised me about the acting is that Fujitani is actually Stephen Segal's daughter, showing that their is some acting talent in that family...

Its a real shame that Anno took a step backwards with his next film Cutey Honey (2004), because here is a film where one gets to see the beginnings of a brilliant auteur - I hope Anno directs something of this caliber again. (particularly if its animated, animation needs less trash and more art on the par with Isao Takahata's work) If you didn't care for Anno's anime work but thought he had talent I'd highly recommend checking this film out.

Ayako Fujitani is gorgeous and amazing in this film, it's hard to believe that her only other significant credits are three giant monster Gamera movies! (Which I would now like to see!)

Anno, for those who know his anime, is well-suited for film. The type of fun visual metaphors that filled "KareKano" from wall to wall are here, too, but used a bit more sparingly.

The plot concerns a burnt-out animator/filmmaker who, running away from his career, returns to the industrial town where he was born. There he encounters a waif, a half-crazy, suicidal, obsessive-compulsive girl who nevertheless has an incredible charm about her. By just listening to her (and eventually filming her), he becomes a part of her life.

As the two grow ever closer, of course disaster looms. Will he need to retreat from this crazy girl? Will his retreat destroy her fragile heart?

The end of the film is a bit disappointing. Anno offers some explanations of why she is like she is, but there really is no revelation. Without revelation, it would be better if left mysterious. This may be the novelist's fault but, given his history, Anno does seem to have problems with endings.

The cinematography is quite beautiful, even the polluted landscape of an industry town is gorgeous here.

Another viewer complained about metaphors, wondering specifically about the girl liking railroad tracks because they are always together but never meet. Well, the girl begs the guy to always be with her, and she also says that she does not like sex. Simple if you use your brain, but you do have to have one.

Any metaphors or philosophizing in this movie are just as simple. Nothing high-faluting or divorced from real experience.

If you liked Evangelion and think you will like this, please remember that there are no giant robots in this movie. If that's cool with you, you will probably have a good time. Thank you.

addendum: a year after writing the above, I learned that Fujitani is the daughter of action star Steven Seagal, and (between Gamera films) appeared in his 1998 movie The Patriot. Her novella "Shiki-Jitsu," which Anno adapted to the screen was inspired by the difficulties she experienced during the time she spent in Los Angeles. Now I'm even more in awe!

I'm writing this down just because of the reviews of the hardcore fans of the guy praising this thing like it's the second coming of Citizen Kane when in reality it's just overblown, pretentious, boring like it was his previous "movie", Love and Pop. And it's also laughable that the same people pretend this is different from Evangelion because of the lack of mechas while in reality the themes and the in-your-face, navel-gazing oriented writing style are the same the dragged down the second part of Evangelion, overdepressive stuff that is even more laughable this time because there are no real consequences from it. Mix the package with overblown classical music that is completely out of place and dialogues that are repeated over and over and over and over and you have a recipe for a failure, failure that is better than the atrocity named Love and Pop simply because there are no "experimental" - read: unwatchable - camera shots this time. When the female protagonist made a dissertion out of a pRoN magazine with Giant Boobs stamped on it about the unnecessary nature of sex I quit this crap for good, because this is directed from the same guy who created the giant-breasted (complete with full nude showing) Jung Freud in Gunbuster - also used as the protagonist of an X-rated game designed by him - and the same person who put several gratuitious fanservice in Evangelion just for the sake of it. Me thinks I'll stick to the first part of the Evangelion series (except a couple of good episodes in the second part), the first five Gunbuster episodes and to the Cutie Honey live-action movie as the best things Hideaki Anno ever made in his whole life, I leave the rest to the fanboys going crazy for "cool" words and pictures that don't mean absolutely nothing at the end of the day.

This movie is a complete waste of time there is nothing artistic about this rubbish peice of work which is pretentious boring and lack of any visual art, lacks budget by using same locations and even the colour red everywhere its like a student trying to make a film while he is studying in 3rd grade nursery school. There is nothing good about it, I can't believe that people actually gave this movie a 10 rating overall it has a 7.5 rating to my surprise it is highly overrated piece of junk that you should definitely avoid. I stopped watching it half the way and deleted it from my hard drive because it was not worth take g up the space .