miscellanium (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miscellanium) wrote2022-07-23 09:55 am
miscellanium) wrote2022-07-23 09:55 am
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kazuki takahashi and rituals (1977)
the two-part review i posted of rituals isn't a true review in that i don't really go in-depth about the substance of the movie. but my spouse pointed out that i don't usually want to watch the same movie over and over, so that got me thinking.... it's not just horny reasons (though that's certainly an element, lol) and it's not an arthouse film like, say, the man who fell to earth, where there's many new details to pick out on every rewatch. of course i've noticed some new details, but after watching it around 10 times since march i can say that it's not nearly as richly textured as some of the other movies i've put on repeatedly.
i'm sure i've said this before but i have a special fondness for flawed stories, especially as a fanfic author, since the flaws mean there's more for me to analyze from both a narrative and a craft perspective. but that isn't really it either. i can think about a flawed story without rewatching it so much. after all, i've given decades of thought to yugioh: duel monsters (the original series) and haven't actually rewatched/re-read it very often.
like everyone who grew up with yugioh and still carries the original series in their heart, i was shocked to learn about takahashi's sudden death. the core messages of the original series resonated a lot with me growing up, and as cheesy as it might sound one of my first significant friendships was a direct result of a shared interest in yugioh. we grew apart a long time ago but i've seen comics from her online that acknowledge the connection we had, and it's touching to know that it made an impact on her too in some way. i wouldn't be who i am today without that friendship. this is part of why i love the arc-v spinoff so much too, since my favorite character in it wouldn't be who he is by the end if it weren't for the main character accepting him as a friend. takahashi's death still doesn't feel real - leonard nimoy's death hit me harder even though (or in part because) i'd been bracing myself for it - but the impact his story had on me has only felt more and more real in the days since.
so what does yugioh have to do with a relatively obscure canadian movie from the 1970s?
i think a big part of the appeal that rituals has for me is how the story ultimately revolves around friendships and the impact thereof. the very premise is that these men are meeting up for the ritual of an annual group trip. whether they started this while in medical school or if the tradition arose out of a desire to stay in touch after graduation doesn't matter - the point is the desire for connection. even though it's apparent they all have strained relationships, they value the connections they have with each other enough to tolerate everyone's shortcomings. and at heart that's what yugioh is about, though now that i'm at a different stage in my life the middle-aged characters resonate more with me than yuugi and his high school peers.
side note: i think i enjoy arc-v as a series more than duel monsters, and shingo resonated a lot with me (still does) but.... he's 14, after all. the way he relates to the world around him is by necessity different than the way i do - which brings me back to rituals.
part of why i've been able to rewatch the movie so often in a relatively short period of time is because of how its core theme of connection is reminiscent of yugioh so i have a similar emotional response without having to watch over 100 episodes of a show, lol, or read over 30 volumes of the manga. and besides, i've given around 20 years of my life to yugioh already and will give it more. rituals is still novel to me, though i feel confident in saying it's a film that'll stick with me for just as long. one of those "the right media at the right time" situations. yugioh was a chance discovery - saw a trailer for it during ads between pokemon episodes right around 9/11 and already had an interest in ancient egypt at the time - and "rituals" too was a chance discovery.
they both also deal with human cruelty, albeit in very different contexts, in a way that is sympathetic to the victims even when they themselves are inflicting harm on others. while the abuse malik ishtar suffered isn't directly comparable to the medical malpractice and social neglect that traumatized matthew crowley, it's still interesting to think about how the better stories built around human connections are the ones that also acknowledge the ways those connections can go wrong.
rituals goes darker psychologically because it's working within the horror genre - if takahashi had stuck to the tone of the earliest chapters, the ones that are heavier on the horror, it's possible we would have ended up with something closer to rituals but of course we'll never know now. the best example of how rituals does this, in my opinion, is the moment in which harry chooses to mercy-kill dj.
so: why does harry kill dj after carrying marty for so long? when i've shown this film to other people, usually this goes without comment but the most recent time i noticed a couple people asking this question. i had the same question the first time but after thinking about it for a moment i felt the answers were pretty clear, and each subsequent re-watch has made me more confident about this.
at the most superficial level, the answer is that dj was more obviously beyond help - they'd already thought he was dead! and how would they carry him? harry and mitzi had been struggling with carrying marty; there's no way they could have added a second. it simply wouldn't have been practical. mitzi was nagging harry earlier about the practicality of carrying marty and he seemed quite prepared to leave dj to die. he freaks out when harry crosses that line to make dj's death personal, though, and there's a few different possible answers as to why that spooks mitzi (all reasonable imo, lol). but harry? what could have driven him to wrap his hands around his friend dj's neck?
harry felt responsible for what happened to marty. if he hadn't taken mitzi's bait and started that physical fight, marty wouldn't have floated off and hit his head in the rapids. (obviously mitzi is just as culpable, and i think he recognizes this since we see the gesture with the sunglasses and his willingness to help carry him, but i'm focusing on harry here since he's the main character and the one who makes the decision about dj.) it's questionable whether he feels equally responsible for dj, since dj is the one who left the group first entirely of his own volition, but with harry's army background and his general ethics it makes sense for him to want to take some responsibility here as well. he wants to give dj the dignity of death, rather than just suffering in excruciating agony until he dies of sun exposure/dehydration/shock. it's euthanasia, which in some ways goes against his ethics but at the same time makes sense - mitzi himself had needled harry earlier about caring for comatose neurosurgery patients who may have ended up in a coma due to harry's errors, which his behavior with marty mirrors. his reluctance to let them die, i think, can be due to an idea that he could still save them. he felt like he could still save marty, since it was a brain injury (his apparent area of expertise) and not something more extreme like the injuries inflicted upon dj. he doesn't feel like he can save dj, not at this point, so it would be kinder to euthanize him.
the performances in this moment are fantastic - you can feel the conflicting emotions - and the actors are a big part of what makes this movie so re-watchable for me. their chemistry works really well and they make their characters feel like authentic people. the writing does at least half the work there, of course, but in the hands of lesser actors even an amazing script can feel clunky. i enjoy animation very much but thinking about rituals vs yugioh does make me wonder if i'm reacting more strongly to the live-action media because i can read more nuance in their expressions and body language. with a lot of animation it seems to me that emotion often comes down to the voice acting, and for someone who's deaf like myself then it's harder to pick up on the same level of nuance. like, i can hear them, but.... i know i'm missing some information.
being animated is one of yugioh's strong points, for several reasons of course but in this context the main reason is that the ages&c of the characters are a little more visually ambiguous and thus more broadly "relatable", though at this moment in my life i find it more cathartic and interesting to see the suffering of unambiguously middle-aged men since i'm much closer to 40 than 16. i wonder whether takahashi thought about this at all in recent years, especially with the major anniversaries and his giving the story a movie epilogue. high school as a story setting has wide appeal for obvious reasons but i am curious how the feelings of the author might change over the years. if other mangaka have discussed this i'd be interested in reading about it.
i wonder about this also because of how it is notoriously difficult to make/keep friends once you're out of high school. workplaces can create a similar kind of artificial intimacy, and so can colleges too - after all, the men of rituals bonded during med school - but once you leave those environments the myriad responsibilities of independent adulthood can make it a challenge to stay in touch with people the same way you might've during school. so i understand the determination of mitzi et al to keep the friend circle together despite their tensions and philosophical differences; they've been through a lot together, including dealing with the deaths of parents, and the idea of severing that kind of connection can be scary. this context makes that moment with harry and dj all the more intense. i understand why the epilogue for yugioh doesn't get into this - it isn't the point - but part of me wishes it could have been addressed. i remember now that when i was in undergrad i was working on a story where yuugi's grandfather died and the characters had to deal with the ripple effects from that. i should pick it back up sometime, or see if someone else has already written something like it. the idea of that particular circle of friends ending up in a situation similar to the one in rituals seems unlikely, lol, but then again people often change as they mature. it's not always dramatic but it's there, the same way my relationship with yugioh has changed over the years. i look forward to seeing how i feel about both yugioh and rituals five or 10 years from now.
phew, ok, i could probably find a way to talk about these two things endlessly so this seems like a good enough stopping point. if you made it to the end of this rambling post i salute you and would love to hear any opinions you have.
i'm sure i've said this before but i have a special fondness for flawed stories, especially as a fanfic author, since the flaws mean there's more for me to analyze from both a narrative and a craft perspective. but that isn't really it either. i can think about a flawed story without rewatching it so much. after all, i've given decades of thought to yugioh: duel monsters (the original series) and haven't actually rewatched/re-read it very often.
like everyone who grew up with yugioh and still carries the original series in their heart, i was shocked to learn about takahashi's sudden death. the core messages of the original series resonated a lot with me growing up, and as cheesy as it might sound one of my first significant friendships was a direct result of a shared interest in yugioh. we grew apart a long time ago but i've seen comics from her online that acknowledge the connection we had, and it's touching to know that it made an impact on her too in some way. i wouldn't be who i am today without that friendship. this is part of why i love the arc-v spinoff so much too, since my favorite character in it wouldn't be who he is by the end if it weren't for the main character accepting him as a friend. takahashi's death still doesn't feel real - leonard nimoy's death hit me harder even though (or in part because) i'd been bracing myself for it - but the impact his story had on me has only felt more and more real in the days since.
so what does yugioh have to do with a relatively obscure canadian movie from the 1970s?
i think a big part of the appeal that rituals has for me is how the story ultimately revolves around friendships and the impact thereof. the very premise is that these men are meeting up for the ritual of an annual group trip. whether they started this while in medical school or if the tradition arose out of a desire to stay in touch after graduation doesn't matter - the point is the desire for connection. even though it's apparent they all have strained relationships, they value the connections they have with each other enough to tolerate everyone's shortcomings. and at heart that's what yugioh is about, though now that i'm at a different stage in my life the middle-aged characters resonate more with me than yuugi and his high school peers.
side note: i think i enjoy arc-v as a series more than duel monsters, and shingo resonated a lot with me (still does) but.... he's 14, after all. the way he relates to the world around him is by necessity different than the way i do - which brings me back to rituals.
part of why i've been able to rewatch the movie so often in a relatively short period of time is because of how its core theme of connection is reminiscent of yugioh so i have a similar emotional response without having to watch over 100 episodes of a show, lol, or read over 30 volumes of the manga. and besides, i've given around 20 years of my life to yugioh already and will give it more. rituals is still novel to me, though i feel confident in saying it's a film that'll stick with me for just as long. one of those "the right media at the right time" situations. yugioh was a chance discovery - saw a trailer for it during ads between pokemon episodes right around 9/11 and already had an interest in ancient egypt at the time - and "rituals" too was a chance discovery.
they both also deal with human cruelty, albeit in very different contexts, in a way that is sympathetic to the victims even when they themselves are inflicting harm on others. while the abuse malik ishtar suffered isn't directly comparable to the medical malpractice and social neglect that traumatized matthew crowley, it's still interesting to think about how the better stories built around human connections are the ones that also acknowledge the ways those connections can go wrong.
rituals goes darker psychologically because it's working within the horror genre - if takahashi had stuck to the tone of the earliest chapters, the ones that are heavier on the horror, it's possible we would have ended up with something closer to rituals but of course we'll never know now. the best example of how rituals does this, in my opinion, is the moment in which harry chooses to mercy-kill dj.
so: why does harry kill dj after carrying marty for so long? when i've shown this film to other people, usually this goes without comment but the most recent time i noticed a couple people asking this question. i had the same question the first time but after thinking about it for a moment i felt the answers were pretty clear, and each subsequent re-watch has made me more confident about this.
at the most superficial level, the answer is that dj was more obviously beyond help - they'd already thought he was dead! and how would they carry him? harry and mitzi had been struggling with carrying marty; there's no way they could have added a second. it simply wouldn't have been practical. mitzi was nagging harry earlier about the practicality of carrying marty and he seemed quite prepared to leave dj to die. he freaks out when harry crosses that line to make dj's death personal, though, and there's a few different possible answers as to why that spooks mitzi (all reasonable imo, lol). but harry? what could have driven him to wrap his hands around his friend dj's neck?
harry felt responsible for what happened to marty. if he hadn't taken mitzi's bait and started that physical fight, marty wouldn't have floated off and hit his head in the rapids. (obviously mitzi is just as culpable, and i think he recognizes this since we see the gesture with the sunglasses and his willingness to help carry him, but i'm focusing on harry here since he's the main character and the one who makes the decision about dj.) it's questionable whether he feels equally responsible for dj, since dj is the one who left the group first entirely of his own volition, but with harry's army background and his general ethics it makes sense for him to want to take some responsibility here as well. he wants to give dj the dignity of death, rather than just suffering in excruciating agony until he dies of sun exposure/dehydration/shock. it's euthanasia, which in some ways goes against his ethics but at the same time makes sense - mitzi himself had needled harry earlier about caring for comatose neurosurgery patients who may have ended up in a coma due to harry's errors, which his behavior with marty mirrors. his reluctance to let them die, i think, can be due to an idea that he could still save them. he felt like he could still save marty, since it was a brain injury (his apparent area of expertise) and not something more extreme like the injuries inflicted upon dj. he doesn't feel like he can save dj, not at this point, so it would be kinder to euthanize him.
the performances in this moment are fantastic - you can feel the conflicting emotions - and the actors are a big part of what makes this movie so re-watchable for me. their chemistry works really well and they make their characters feel like authentic people. the writing does at least half the work there, of course, but in the hands of lesser actors even an amazing script can feel clunky. i enjoy animation very much but thinking about rituals vs yugioh does make me wonder if i'm reacting more strongly to the live-action media because i can read more nuance in their expressions and body language. with a lot of animation it seems to me that emotion often comes down to the voice acting, and for someone who's deaf like myself then it's harder to pick up on the same level of nuance. like, i can hear them, but.... i know i'm missing some information.
being animated is one of yugioh's strong points, for several reasons of course but in this context the main reason is that the ages&c of the characters are a little more visually ambiguous and thus more broadly "relatable", though at this moment in my life i find it more cathartic and interesting to see the suffering of unambiguously middle-aged men since i'm much closer to 40 than 16. i wonder whether takahashi thought about this at all in recent years, especially with the major anniversaries and his giving the story a movie epilogue. high school as a story setting has wide appeal for obvious reasons but i am curious how the feelings of the author might change over the years. if other mangaka have discussed this i'd be interested in reading about it.
i wonder about this also because of how it is notoriously difficult to make/keep friends once you're out of high school. workplaces can create a similar kind of artificial intimacy, and so can colleges too - after all, the men of rituals bonded during med school - but once you leave those environments the myriad responsibilities of independent adulthood can make it a challenge to stay in touch with people the same way you might've during school. so i understand the determination of mitzi et al to keep the friend circle together despite their tensions and philosophical differences; they've been through a lot together, including dealing with the deaths of parents, and the idea of severing that kind of connection can be scary. this context makes that moment with harry and dj all the more intense. i understand why the epilogue for yugioh doesn't get into this - it isn't the point - but part of me wishes it could have been addressed. i remember now that when i was in undergrad i was working on a story where yuugi's grandfather died and the characters had to deal with the ripple effects from that. i should pick it back up sometime, or see if someone else has already written something like it. the idea of that particular circle of friends ending up in a situation similar to the one in rituals seems unlikely, lol, but then again people often change as they mature. it's not always dramatic but it's there, the same way my relationship with yugioh has changed over the years. i look forward to seeing how i feel about both yugioh and rituals five or 10 years from now.
phew, ok, i could probably find a way to talk about these two things endlessly so this seems like a good enough stopping point. if you made it to the end of this rambling post i salute you and would love to hear any opinions you have.