The Ceremony

Director: Nagisa Oshima

1971 / 123min / 35mm

Ōshima plants a ticking time bomb under the placid surface of the classic Japanese family melodrama in this acerbic depiction of the highly dysfunctional (and highly influential) Sakurada clan, whose pathological devotion to keeping up appearances of normalcy and propriety we see firmly established by a fading elder generation and inherited, with tragic consequences, by the younger. Kenzo Kawarazaki’s Masuo, stifled scion of his forebears’ asphyxiating expectations and the honor of the Sakuradas, struggles to keep skeletons representing incest, rankling resentment, and other private shames firmly in the closet through a succession of weddings and funerals, each empty ceremony another step in a death march leading inexorably towards his own farce of an arranged marriage.

Distributor: Janus Films