Synopsis
A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young girl who has a ritual of repeating "Tomorrow is my birthday" everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.
Ritual
2000 ‘式日’ Directed by Hideaki Anno
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Alternative Titles
Shiki-Jitsu, 식일, Ritüel
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Popular reviews
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There was a time in my life where I longed to die.
Wake up, go to class, go to work, go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. The tedium, the monotony, a mask to help me confront the crushing loneliness I felt at the time. Wake up, go to class, go to work, go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. I wanted to heal the hole in my heart, but no matter how often I reached out, I only seemed to be digging my grave further. Wake up, go to class, go to work, go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. Every day, I dragged myself through the tedium, the inconveniences of life ruling my perception of the arbitrary march of time. Wake…
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Anno probably could have just made blockbusters after EVA but instead he went off and made arthouse movies about being fucked up and lonely. God bless.
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A review by way of Ingmar Bergman’s take on Ivan’s Childhood:
“My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly I found myself standing at the door of a room, the key to which, until then, had never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease. I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how.”
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The films theme of escapism is something I've come to relate to alot in this film. Like the female protagonist i also find myself wanting to escape a dreary reality. Movies, social media, Fantasizing, day dreaming, and Lucid dreaming especially are forms of escapism for me. Most people from what I've seen agree that social media is toxic and unhealthy which is somewhat true but for me it's also a way i can communicate with so many people who like what i like, and are like me. I use it as a gateway to distract myself from daily life and avoid thinking about things that cause me alot of anxiety and stress like school, family drama, and my gender dysphoria.…
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How about my blood? Maybe it's pretty. Maybe I'll look. See? I'm still okay. I didn't let go. Still okay to be alive.
i once tried to end my life by walking into heavy traffic. i'm particular about the verbiage because i am not someone who cries, or mourns, or suffers; my decision was made in an instant - i simply didn't want to go any further with the abysmally fractured version of life i had been swallowed in without permission or action. i no longer cared to put in the effort to find any beauty in the world, and the cancerous weight of living was metastasizing in my lungs. i was pulled away, too, in an instant.
the thing…
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i don't think there are many other filmmakers that understand the artform as succinctly as Hideaki Anno does. it posits it's two characters acting as two sides of the same coin - self-loathing, defeated, silent, wrapped in fused with mania, trembling, and trauma, an unrepentant core polished into an object begging to be dismantled. a perfect aesthetic work - immaculately structured beauty thru light, architecture, geography, and colour - as a dream of something attainable but empty, unsustainable in it's functionality as a machine that narrativizes/aestheticizes reality. the film functions like an endless stream of fantasies and dreams had over a lifetime - the kind that is built subconsciously, out of feeling and desire and drawn from what is in…
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"Tomorrow is my birthday."
Escapism by means of a cycle of aimlessness. Trauma does not automatically heal itself. When family ceases to be family; when it systematically crumbles until there is nothing left but negative emotions and a lack of will to live, what is the next step supposed to be? Death seems like a release. Almost like a ray of hope to finally end the torture and get it over with; to finally be free. But it's not the answer. There's still time to set things right.
"Tomorrow is my birthday."
For a long while, it feels like the man and the woman are the only ones in the suburban Japanese cityscape. Red umbrella, an abandoned building, rain and…
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A filmed dialogue about living. Film as sort of bridge of sorts between forms of behavior that exist in the outskirts of society, of the acceptable in way or another. Anno has a great eye, specially when applied to a series of coded gestures, a way of expression, ritual as the title promises and how he both locates and found a form to better give it room to breathe.
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The Earth is vast and heavily populated, and that's easy for all of us to see. How we perceive our presence here is where things tend to differ from person to person. Some people see the world as an open landscape full of endless opportunities, and every new face they encounter represents the possibility of a new friendship. However, others see the world as a horrifyingly expansive space populated by dreams that will never become actualized and people who are always nearby but just out of touch. Maybe those with the less flowery perspective saw things differently in the past, but it's hard to stay positive when the people who are supposed to love and embrace us decide to demean…
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for as long as i can remember, i find it hard accepting the fact i’m lonely. it scares me.
i keep trying to find distractions, whether it’s constantly checking all of my social apps, randomly calling and chatting with people i haven’t spoken to in weeks, or even constantly consuming different kinds of media. i don’t want to face it, i don’t want to face the fact i am just a tiny little fraction in a world so big it’s weird to think how suffocating it can get. i do not feel unloved because i acknowledge those who care for me, but i feel like i don’t have too many people to give all my love to.
so i’m stuck.… -
I am drawn to the idea of escapism and I’m unsure why. Well, maybe I know why, everything I do, everything everyone does, feels like an existential sedative. Watching TV, playing video games, reading, small talk, sports, in some way even sleeping is an involuntary act of escape. However this train of thought leaves me with two essential questions: what is our reality and what are we escaping?
In Ritual, it seems Anno has similar questions with more conclusive answers. Escape is ritualistic, it is engraved into our routine, helplessly tangled into the monotony of our lives, permanently programmed into the minutia of the endless days stacked on top, one after another. When faced with the true ephemerality of happiness,…
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A regular day (or dream) in Shunji Iwai's life. Tomorrow is her birthday, always. Red umbrella. Post-modernism spaces with trains and drawings. Communicating with the medium itself, film. Hideaki Anno's projected reality of the moving image, repeating rituals are human, and animation is the same as live action. Aching and lonely. Beyond this, however is unknown, but we all know to live and to be lonely is the meaning (to be human). The infinite sadness has a chance to get covered by the sky and the sun. This is a personal and collective fantasy one needs to experience.