Ritual (2000)

dir. Hideaki Anno

I’ve always told therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, and doctors that I’ve never had suicidal thoughts. I’ve never wanted or planned to do it. Whenever my brain decides to play out a death scenario (near a ledge, I'm falling; on the highway, I'm crashing; close to a gun, I'm, well…), I instantly reject the scene. I get immediate vertigo and I evict the image from my mind. I have not stood by the road and threatened to leap in front of a truck; I have not climbed outside a railing and looked up, then down; I have not thrown myself at the emergency exit door on a moving train. I do stare at fire, but it has nothing to do with my backstory. I just like the way it dances.

I have, however, glanced sideways at the edge. I have teased my imagination with horrible endings. From time to time Thanatos rests his hand on my shoulder, polishes his scythe, and licks his lips, eager to reap my soul. But he never stays long, and he never speaks. He shows me weeping family members and distraught friends asking "why," he projects an image of my lifeless body onto my frontal cortex. Is that “thoughts”? Is that what experts call “ideation”? I have sometimes given myself to tiny, microscopic rituals, to pocket-sized performances—not a tower’s worth, not enough to fill a day and night, but enough for an hour or two. Enough to make me laugh so hard my abs ache in the morning. Enough to hear the wind chimes for a while.

Probability is divinity. Our best evidence for the existence of God is the ruthlessness of weather. To ritualize is to externalize the ineffable—to seek absolution Yesterday, judgment Today, and mercy Tomorrow—to divine intent and truth in the unpredictability of space and time, of particles and clouds and celestial coincidences—messages in stars, writing in the bones, burning guts and prophecies and ringing telephones. O Haruspex—arrow-shaker, dowel-pointer, aeromancer—read my fortune back to me. Draw my future on my arm in charcoal. Memorize this dance for me, perform it for the empty seats, synchronize your steps with silence. Armed with ritual, She can celebrate another day. She won’t get older if She freezes every time her mother calls, if She stacks the rocks in perfect order, if She paints her face white. Know that death is barred from sacred spaces. Know that when you stand inside the cone of scarlet light, when safely tucked inside the basement bathtub, the stranger cannot touch you. Know this: judgment comes tomorrow, not today.

The gods respond to persistence. Repetition sanctifies, rituals catalyze, and destruction purifies. A clap before a bow, and then the kami won’t ignore your prayers. Ancient sorcery always comes back to blood—to methods for its removal, and procedures for making clean your dirty meat. The Lord your God demands a healthy cut of lamb, or else His locusts shall obscure the sun and blot the moon and strip your cattle of their flesh, leaving only skeletons. Abraham raised the knife and turned his eyes to Yahweh. He asked himself: Is the sky still blue? Is the song still stuck in my head? Can I finish this verse before I end this life? He took a breath. He begged for signs.

Then, ritual complete, he looked down. He peeked behind the veil. There—today’s answer, spoken by the universe—there it was, staring back at him. Isaac’s blank expression. (They’d done this every day for years; Isaac didn't fear his binding anymore. He got along with God.) So Abraham relented. He was still okay. He was still okay today. Thank God—thank the Holy Ghost—thank the ritual, the awful test he passed. He retreated from the railing with a smile. Isaac stood up, brushed his shirt, and joked, “I bet tomorrow is your birthday.”

The prophet laughed and said, “Yes. Tomorrow is my birthday.”

⁂

The right movie at the right time can change the way you see yourself. A movie can change the way you talk about your feelings. If you’re here, you probably agree. You’ve probably felt it many times before: that quickening heartbeat when you realize that this film will touch your soul, your flushing cheeks and tightening grip as the roller coaster climbs higher and higher and higher still. And the rush as you recognize the consistency between Hideaki Anno’s works: the commitment to harsh lights, the alternation between blunt moralizing and impenetrable symbolism, the love of metaphor and simple visual storytelling. The flashes of zaniness surrounded by long, quiet stretches of internal agony and repetitive slice-of-life. Shinji walks around again, rides the train again, listens to cicadas again. The penguin does a silly dance. Everyone will die. It will be his fault. No, Shinji’s father is no Abraham. Gendo didn’t hesitate to please his Lord.

The lesson of Her clothes is almost overwhelming. Clown makeup gradually retreats, color drips out of her wardrobe over time, her style drops its pretense and complexity. The layers fall away and leave us with black shirts and smaller silhouettes, a frank portrait of grief and longing. The house itself demands rote interpretation. Anno continues his obsession with Dante and Milton and Christian hell and Shinto rites and psychotherapy and builds the Mind Palace with references to each. It’s sometimes a little too Freud, sometimes a little on the nose. It’s sometimes a relief when the film becomes obscure again. I don’t want to hear anymore about your coping mechanisms, so tell me about angels again, tell me about the day the oceans turned red. Tell me about the distillation of the soul. Tell me about LCL, Director. But fables, in their directness and shocking honesty, serve a purpose. Fables shouldn't be too subtle. Anno isn’t just absentmindedly thumbing through the file cabinets in his brain. Anno drives his feelings home with a carpenter’s patience. He taps the nail with love and precision, again and again, scene after scene, until it’s stable and secure, until it’s firmly embedded in our skulls. Until it’s flush with the bone.

⁂

This is the part where I assure you that I’m okay. You don’t need to check on me. If you were getting worried, I appreciate your concern. But I have not built a tower and filled it with magic wards against the void. I have not laid on my side between the tracks so Death can tickle me with its eyelashes. If I had a Mind Palace, it would not be a hellish tower of constant sorrows. It would be a McDonald’s, and it would have only one floor, plus a jungle gym. My only ritual would be ordering ice cream and nodding with exaggerated Millennial understanding as the overtired cashier tells me their machine is down again, sorry for the inconvenience. Not today then. Tomorrow, I’ll get ice cream. Tomorrow is my birthday.

In bleaker moments, I would lay there and think: “This is the sort of situation where really depressed people would contemplate it. If I were to contemplate it—you know what ‘it’ is—I would think about using [currently accessible method]. But no! Get that out of my head! I don’t want to do that! Fuck, that made me nauseous. I never want to see that image again.” I’ll leave it to professionals to tell me if that “counts.” But because of this film, I think I will mention it at my next appointment anyway—with several emphatic disclaimers, of course, that I have not experienced such moments recently, so don’t put me in grippy socks and a sanitary gown, please. I can’t afford the time off work. Besides, what will my cats do? They’re probably waiting by my door right now. I have to make it home tonight or else they’ll be sad. I’ve got to make it home tonight. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow…