This family lives in a suburban area. The father works while the mother spends time with the father’s sick father. The son seems to be a rebellious teenage boy and in Japanese terms. The caring mother seems to have all her affection directed towards him. One day, she summons all the members for dinner but her husband goes missing. The prologue depicts an alternate reality where a fictional natural disaster took place. Even the post-earthquake water becomes scarce and is now regarded as a luxury. It goes without saying that bottled water becomes extremely rare after such a disaster.
A few years later, life manages to get back on track for Yoriko. She has picked up the pieces and moved forward. Now that her husband had passed away and her father in law no longer existed and her son worked in a different location, she felt liberated from the shackles of confinement. Accompanying this thought, she also had joined an unconventional Japanese religious group and started working in a supermarket. She used to spend endless back breaking hours praying. To her, pure and expensive holy water was no less than a treasure and bottled water became a rare and valuable asset during those bleak times.
Her blossoming garden is a thing of history and so is her passion for it; she now has a dry Karesansui or Japanese Zen garden which she modifies every day by raking gravel to resemble ripples on a pond.
However, one day Osamu suddenly returns, claiming that he is gravely ill and wishes to be with his wife during her remaining time, in reality, he is not wants. It was expected considering all aspects to see him, that looking away came as a shock to Yoriko, and was slightly more than disappointment. After all, she had little choice in the matter of whether or not to allow him to occupy a portion of her house, as the emotions Eli stood there too were strong. In a sense, Osamu’s appearance was similar to a stone cast into the tranquil existence she had, and the order she had spent quite a bit of time establishing was on the verge of collapsing and being turned upside down. Little assistance is provided to her by Mizuki (Hana kino). She is the slave who is active on the construction site and is friendly with some of her colleagues. She generally has a strong irony. It gives Yoriko a little more power. But even Mizuki has her own accurate troubles and difficulties, or perhaps they are hidden too ingeniously or far too laboriously.
I remember the time I was honored to do an interview with Ogigami, the director for the film `Riverside Mukolitta. During the interview she said that she got the inspiration for Mukolitta from a documentary that she had seen on TV. If we talk about the current film, Vedala Shanson seems to have different stories of post-disaster recovery as muses to draw upon. Whatever the case may be, my own guess as to the veracity of the source material aside, “Ripples” is purely factual in that it captures the trauma and the fear and the frayed existence that life offers us.
Water is referenced repeatedly in “Ripples”, with emphasis on its mesmerizing properties of transparency, serenity and smoothness. One of the most obvious examples is associated with the cult-like religion, to which Yoriko is a follower. It is known in Buddhism that water is an archetype of the pathway towards enlightenment and, just like how water is cleansing, Ryokumei-kai water’s function is to purify the soul from its toxins, aided of course by generous donations.
The opposite of that is best explained by the users to the chants which accompany their dancing performance as in this case, the holy water allows the users to forget their fears, which is also a clear explanation as to why such kinds of rape sects have spread following an adversity. Yoriko has concealed, under a placid surface, both horror and anger at her abandonment in the midst of the devastation coupled with severe family and economic adversities she was compelled to endure. All this forms a vicious cycle in which the terrified family struggles to survive, one hand strangling the other. One would imagine trying to remain sane or afloat while being economically suffocated is an easy thing to do. But this is a stable and shattered composure.
The prime characters of the “Ripples” are very ambiguous and complex hence it becomes almost impossible to feel for a particular character or singer in a performance. Yoriko, for example, is a character whom we are made to sympathize, but she can unexpectedly become mean, or selfish, or bigoted. Osamu, we think, is a character we would not want to sympathize with but how can we ignore a man who left his family because of a devastating experience and is now struggling to afford cancer treatment? Mizuki is one more wounded person who cannot repair the house where she lives and the house which is her soul and whose fictitious image helps her stay sane after the trauma. Not even the irritable old man who always demands a discount for Yoriko’s case, escapes the impact of the economics of old age.
The amalgamation of emotions in the film presents one of the most useful aspects of this work. To use water once more as a metaphor, ‘Ripples‘ suggests that we are all microcosm of universes with our emotions and fears enclosed by some fragile skin, but can make ripples which will reach the infinity. Ogigami employs a non conventional approach by illustratively depicting physical ripple effects of the characters during their forceful grappling wits, which tends to be quite intense at the times.
The film raises lots of disturbing relevant environmental and social concerns and their interconnections are articulated in relation to the fear these evoke. The return of religion-centered zealots who want to help and so disturb everyone, the weight of money, welfare to outcast groups and stereotyping.
Mariko Tsutsui has been commended for assuming characters that require her to sink deep into her emotions of trauma and anguish in two of Koji Fukada‘s projects. She has played the role of a traumatized wife Akie in “Harmonium”, alongside being a broken nurse Ichiko in “A Girl Missing.” This time, however, she goes a step further and manages to incorporate new elements into the character she is portraying, which in this case is a comedic approach. Her performance creates a character that is both strong and vulnerable, which makes the ending immensely beautiful, full of laughter, hope and poetry all at once. This is most apparent Osamu spoils the sanctity of her home with his sloppy behavior and Mariko’s character development is humorous. The amazing ending ties the character performances together perfectly; full of beauty and emotion.
Naoko Ogigami, once again demonstrates her incredible ability to shed new light on common themes as well as the intricacies within the scope of human relationships while also being amused by the commonplace in “Ripples.”
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