[Categories: Specials]
Shiki-Jitsu: Hideaki Anno, live action director
Anyone who remembers the second half of End of Evangelion and various bits of Kare Kano may have suspected that within the mind of Hideaki Anno lurked a live-action director anxious to get out. I was interested to see how his own distinctive style (complete with what I’ve come to call ‘Anno-isms’) transferred from animation to live action, which includes the feature Shiki-Jitsu, a.k.a. ‘Ritual’.
A burnt-out film-maker returns to his home town where he meets a strange young woman who has a habit of saying “It’s my birthday tomorrow!” every day. She is clearly suffering from some form of mental illness, and the nameless film-maker (referred to simply as ‘Director’) spends a month with her, filming their daily experiences as he tries to make sense of their respective situations and feelings.
If you’ve seen Anno’s direction in action you’ll immediately recognise the techniques and recurring themes that appear in Shiki-Jitsu, such as the odd camera angles, emotional exploration and so on. Unlike his animated work, this film has a less confident feel to it, as if he is still not entirely comfortable in the different medium. Nevertheless it is quite stunning from a visual point of view with the vibrant colours contrasting with the bleak industrial cityscapes and the up-close feel to the camerawork. The girl’s home is a surreal and bizarre place, reflecting her own disjointed mind: I actually felt quite unnerved while watching it and started to doubt my own sanity!
For the majority of the film I wasn’t sure if it was a love story or not: the Director is drawn to the girl’s eccentric charm and feels somewhat responsible for her wellbeing, while she is simply lonely, insecure and deeply troubled. It is not made clear until quite late on why she is this way but all the way through he is questioning why he is with her, and what the consequences would be if he left.
There are plenty of symbols and metaphors in Shiki-Jitsu: the ‘birthday’ theme for instance exemplifies how the girl is looking forward to a brighter future, but is at the same time wishing it will never arrive. Music is used sparingly but effectively with piano lines for the most part with only a couple of more dramatic moments. The ending song, Raining by Cocco, is a beautiful way to accompany an emotional and moving ending. That’s right: Hideaki Anno has remembered how to do a great ending again!
Summary
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this film, I wouldn’t call Shiki-Jitsu the best I’ve ever seen: the claustrophobic, almost-insane atmosphere is quite challenging to sit through at times and the photography is certainly in the indie/experimental category. It is however very intriguing and the two leads (the Director is a real-life film-maker and the girl wrote the book on which this is based) play their parts well. Shiki-Jitsu is a thoughtful but sometimes unsettling examination of love and loneliness as well as being a visually spectacular piece of cinema: there’s certainly a lot more to Hideaki Anno than angsty teens and giant robots!
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