miscellanium (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miscellanium) wrote2025-08-07 04:15 pm
miscellanium) wrote2025-08-07 04:15 pm
the beginning and end overlap, and that's the middle
long time no post, but who cares. i'm alive and kicking and that's what matters. yesterday i saw that letterboxd posted a recommendation list of lesser-known summer horror movies and it included rituals! i was so proud and excited (even though i did nothing to make that happen lol) that i just had to watch it again. didn't get to do my yearly re-watch in april because i was in the middle of a big move and job change, all for the better so far, and i'm going camping this weekend so what better choice for a last-night-in-civilization movie than one about a camping trip gone horribly wrong??
it's not as texture-rich a movie as some others i've rewatched, sure, but i still feel as though there's something new for me to chew on every time. it's like a piece of gum that never loses its flavor, with all the pros and cons that implies (microplastics, etc).
this time i came away really wanting to watch picnic at hanging rock (i know, way overdue!) because the sag in energy once jesse is introduced was practically palpable and it reminded me of how the screenwriter hadn't wanted to take that direction originally, but also because that movie sounds like it's more about the relationships and dynamics between a group of younger women than any horror just like how the focus of rituals feels more locked in on the relationships and dynamics between these middle-aged men than the gritty details of their suffering.
pendulumscale asked something along the lines of whether we're supposed to understand that harry survives because he was in the military, with jingoistic implications, and i don't think so. it feels to me like that's secondary to the traumas he experienced, and those traumas are what shape his reactions. the fact that some of his traumas are rooted in his military service only signifies insofar as matthew was also victimized by his own military service. i suppose we could connect it to harry's relative selflessness (his first clear line of dialogue is "is it ethical?"), but if harry is american then he would've been drafted and forced to serve. if he's canadian then perhaps he volunteered, but if the character is in his early 50s then he could've been conscripted for world war ii and stayed on like so many traumatized soldiers did after feeling like they couldn't fit into civilian life anymore. who knows.
anyway, my point! my point is that so many of the character interactions revolve around the theme of selfishness specifically tied to their relationships with other men. harry's abandonment of his father that weighs on him so heavily; mitzi's attitudes about his own father and harry's, and towards the men he considers his friends; marty's struggle as a gay man at a time when it was so hard to connect, to only connect; d.j.'s frustrations with his brother and condescending attitude toward the other men; and abel is more of a cipher but it seems reasonable to read into his distance from his children (mitzi drolly asking "do you know its name" will never cease being funny to me) as likely related to his own father being similarly distant, given the time period and everything.
and then you have jesse and matthew, outcast and isolated by their disabilities and related traumas. mitzi repeatedly expresses distaste for the idea of keeping someone alive and suffering longer than he deems necessary--"what the hell does a man have to turn into before you call it quits?"--while harry's reluctance to let go seems rooted in his guilt over his father, how his father died in alcoholic isolation. we see this with how he hangs onto marty for so long despite everything. so why does harry makes the choice he does with d.j.? d.j. doesn't remind him of his father, not in that way. it's a mercy killing that he surely wishes he could've granted others, sure, but also d.j. isn't longing for connection in a way that harry can recognize.
d.j. isolated himself in more ways than one and i think we can say that machismo played a big part in that isolation. d.j. ditches them instead of taking mitzi's frankly reasonable suggestion of trying to get a helicopter rescue (sure, they charge for silly rescues, but wouldn't that have been preferable to being stalked and murdered??). abel dies because he fell behind and could be isolated from the rest. marty's fate is sealed at the waterfall when harry throws himself into a fight with mitzi and the two of them allow marty to float off, forgotten. mitzi's fate is sealed when he runs away after the encounter with d.j., separating himself from harry.
the one time we really see harry focus on himself, take a moment to be selfish, it's to try and stop himself from bleeding out. if harry had heeded mitzi's pleas to come save him first and then be treated, would he have died? would they have both died? there's no way to know but the agony harry shows after realizing he's too late to save mitzi feels rooted in something deeper, a howl of grief over losing the last connection he had in the group and finding himself isolated all over again. i think we can take mitzi at his word that he tried to come back for harry since he'd done it once already, when he had that tantrum about carrying marty, so despite everything mitzi didn't want to keep himself isolated. he didn't want to die alone like their fathers.
cis men are so often taught that it's a weakness to show they care about each other. at the beginning, when harry pointedly asks d.j. whether his idea of a dick-embiggening clinic that can churn out surgeries like a fast food place churns out burgers is ethical, d.j. flips out. what's wrong with filling a demand? never mind if it's predatory. d.j. tries to help marty with keeping a job but it's just a bandaid for the deeper isolation marty is suffering from, the reason for his drinking, and it doesn't seem like d.j. tried much to help with that. mitzi's slur-ridden outburst at the waterfall when marty is trying to cling to him, to connect, is born out of fear as much as frustration, fear of seeming soft (he keeps seeking targets to attack so he can do Something and not be passive) and fear of whatever he was raised to believe is unmanly.
matthew's murder of abel must have felt like a punishment to marty, a connection severed for no fucking reason the same way the military untethered matthew from society. "it's possible we're all paying for something one of us is responsible for." mitzi was so close. the tragedy here, the real horror, is that they're all equally responsible in various ways, all repeating the cycles of abuse and trauma thrust upon them that men are expected to carry and uphold. even if the antagonizing force had been left ambiguous this would still be the heart of the story.
"after you find out which one of us it was, are you gonna throw the rascal to the wolves for the sake of the team?"
"you bet, old buddy."
it's not as texture-rich a movie as some others i've rewatched, sure, but i still feel as though there's something new for me to chew on every time. it's like a piece of gum that never loses its flavor, with all the pros and cons that implies (microplastics, etc).
this time i came away really wanting to watch picnic at hanging rock (i know, way overdue!) because the sag in energy once jesse is introduced was practically palpable and it reminded me of how the screenwriter hadn't wanted to take that direction originally, but also because that movie sounds like it's more about the relationships and dynamics between a group of younger women than any horror just like how the focus of rituals feels more locked in on the relationships and dynamics between these middle-aged men than the gritty details of their suffering.
pendulumscale asked something along the lines of whether we're supposed to understand that harry survives because he was in the military, with jingoistic implications, and i don't think so. it feels to me like that's secondary to the traumas he experienced, and those traumas are what shape his reactions. the fact that some of his traumas are rooted in his military service only signifies insofar as matthew was also victimized by his own military service. i suppose we could connect it to harry's relative selflessness (his first clear line of dialogue is "is it ethical?"), but if harry is american then he would've been drafted and forced to serve. if he's canadian then perhaps he volunteered, but if the character is in his early 50s then he could've been conscripted for world war ii and stayed on like so many traumatized soldiers did after feeling like they couldn't fit into civilian life anymore. who knows.anyway, my point! my point is that so many of the character interactions revolve around the theme of selfishness specifically tied to their relationships with other men. harry's abandonment of his father that weighs on him so heavily; mitzi's attitudes about his own father and harry's, and towards the men he considers his friends; marty's struggle as a gay man at a time when it was so hard to connect, to only connect; d.j.'s frustrations with his brother and condescending attitude toward the other men; and abel is more of a cipher but it seems reasonable to read into his distance from his children (mitzi drolly asking "do you know its name" will never cease being funny to me) as likely related to his own father being similarly distant, given the time period and everything.
and then you have jesse and matthew, outcast and isolated by their disabilities and related traumas. mitzi repeatedly expresses distaste for the idea of keeping someone alive and suffering longer than he deems necessary--"what the hell does a man have to turn into before you call it quits?"--while harry's reluctance to let go seems rooted in his guilt over his father, how his father died in alcoholic isolation. we see this with how he hangs onto marty for so long despite everything. so why does harry makes the choice he does with d.j.? d.j. doesn't remind him of his father, not in that way. it's a mercy killing that he surely wishes he could've granted others, sure, but also d.j. isn't longing for connection in a way that harry can recognize.
d.j. isolated himself in more ways than one and i think we can say that machismo played a big part in that isolation. d.j. ditches them instead of taking mitzi's frankly reasonable suggestion of trying to get a helicopter rescue (sure, they charge for silly rescues, but wouldn't that have been preferable to being stalked and murdered??). abel dies because he fell behind and could be isolated from the rest. marty's fate is sealed at the waterfall when harry throws himself into a fight with mitzi and the two of them allow marty to float off, forgotten. mitzi's fate is sealed when he runs away after the encounter with d.j., separating himself from harry.
the one time we really see harry focus on himself, take a moment to be selfish, it's to try and stop himself from bleeding out. if harry had heeded mitzi's pleas to come save him first and then be treated, would he have died? would they have both died? there's no way to know but the agony harry shows after realizing he's too late to save mitzi feels rooted in something deeper, a howl of grief over losing the last connection he had in the group and finding himself isolated all over again. i think we can take mitzi at his word that he tried to come back for harry since he'd done it once already, when he had that tantrum about carrying marty, so despite everything mitzi didn't want to keep himself isolated. he didn't want to die alone like their fathers.
cis men are so often taught that it's a weakness to show they care about each other. at the beginning, when harry pointedly asks d.j. whether his idea of a dick-embiggening clinic that can churn out surgeries like a fast food place churns out burgers is ethical, d.j. flips out. what's wrong with filling a demand? never mind if it's predatory. d.j. tries to help marty with keeping a job but it's just a bandaid for the deeper isolation marty is suffering from, the reason for his drinking, and it doesn't seem like d.j. tried much to help with that. mitzi's slur-ridden outburst at the waterfall when marty is trying to cling to him, to connect, is born out of fear as much as frustration, fear of seeming soft (he keeps seeking targets to attack so he can do Something and not be passive) and fear of whatever he was raised to believe is unmanly.
matthew's murder of abel must have felt like a punishment to marty, a connection severed for no fucking reason the same way the military untethered matthew from society. "it's possible we're all paying for something one of us is responsible for." mitzi was so close. the tragedy here, the real horror, is that they're all equally responsible in various ways, all repeating the cycles of abuse and trauma thrust upon them that men are expected to carry and uphold. even if the antagonizing force had been left ambiguous this would still be the heart of the story.
"after you find out which one of us it was, are you gonna throw the rascal to the wolves for the sake of the team?"
"you bet, old buddy."
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There are MANY ways to interpret the '75 film and the book (it's one of my favourite books AND one of my favourite films. The 2018 miniseries...isn't. The 1969 one...is video art these days) - from "the UK losing it's grip on the colonies" to "repressed sexuality" to "man vs nature." It's a story of people struggling to understand a horrific event no one could've predicted.
The missing chapter...I feel like saving that until you experience at least one version of the story because it's one of those "if you know the story, you TRULY GET why it was a letdown!"
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mitzi is very cat-like. he wants in, then he wants out, then he wants back in. i think he's tempted most by connection, but im not sure what exactly triggers him to leave each time. yea, Marty's heavy, but talking to harry is kind of like talking to a brick wall when he's ptsd triggered mode. i think it's ultimately his inability to connect with harry when he's like that that makes him give up.