| Nov. 7th, 2005 @ 05:06 am Mise en Scène in The End of Evangelion: Kabbalah before Madonna |
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"If you don't understand it [Neon Genesis Evangelion], it is your own problem."
-- Director Anno Hideaki
When describing The End of Evangelion, most armchair analysts categorize it as incomprehensible. While that assessment has some merit, too many viewers shut their brain off, and cast the movie into the same lot as Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Dali’s "Un Chien Andalou.” Rife with symbology, even its plot is difficult to discern without frequent examination of its mise en scène. All of the film’s symbols, though, correspond to various things in the emanationist Jewish mystic sect, Kabbalah.
The first thing that needs to be said about The End of Evangelion is that it is not, by any means, stand-alone. It is the direct sequel to a Japanese anime series, “Neon Genesis Evangelion.” Unlike other movies that are direct sequels of TV shows, like Serenity or Star Trek, The End of Evangelion does not spend any time attempting to create a synopsis for those who aren’t familiar with the show; it dives right in. Fan folklore has it that because Neon Genesis Evangelion’s ending was so disliked (i.e., death threats at the director and vehement hate-mail), the studio which made the series, Gainax, re-hired Neon Genesis Evangelion’s chronically depressed director, Hideaki Anno, to create a feature film for retelling Neon Genesis Evangelion’s end, which would have a high budget and 90 minutes to tell it’s tale instead of a paltry 44 minute span (the length of the last two episodes). This, and to insure The End of Evangelion would be as dark as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gainax had Anno stop taking medicine for his depression.
The End of Evangelion was released in 1997. Its America release was in 2002, and the leading American voice-actors were Spike Spencer, Amanda Winn Lee, and Tiffany Grant. The End of Evangelion opens with SEELE hacking into NERV's core, three supercomputers known as the “Magi.” NERV (German for “nerve”) is contracted out to the JSSDF, or “Japanese Strategic Self Defense Forces.” It is JSSDF’s job to stop 18 supernatural entities, known as “Angels.” Beneath NERV’s headquarters hangs Lilith, mother of angels and demons, hangs crucified and bleeding LCL, the primordial soup from which all life begins. It is said that if an angel would come in contact with Lilith, the result would end destroy humanity. SEELE (German for “soul”) is a shadowy clandestine organization that more or less runs NERV by way of its puppets, chief commander Gendo Ikari, Fuyutsuki Kouzou, assistant commander, and Ritsuko Akagi, head programmer. The hacking was in response to Gendo betraying SEELE. SEELEE’s agenda was the exact opposite of the JSSDF party line of “saving humanity from destruction.” Prior to NERV’s organization, SEELE undertook an expedition to the Antarctic to recover the embryo of Adam: God’s first creation, man or angel. After NERV had killed all 18 angels, (using giant robot-technology, also courtesy SEELE. However, these giant robots, these evangelion, were actually soulless clones of Adam) an evangelion, bearer of Adam’s essence, could merge with Lilith. This new entity would unite with all of humanity’s souls into one pseudo-entity, thereby extinguishing any and all strife in existence. A bit of a different goal than “save humanity from rampaging angels.” Gendo betrayed SEELE by merging with Adam. This would allow Gendo/Adam to be able to merge with Lilith. If this happened the entity-entity to possess the mind of Gendo, allowing him to appreciate the fact that he would be re-united with his dead wife.
Responding to the hacking, Ritsuko Akagi upgrades the Magi’s security. Denied the ability to lock down NERV electronically, SEELE fields dozens of troops to take over NERV by force, to kill Gendo/Adam before he can merge with Lilith. SEELE desires a world of discernable individual souls, not the husband/wife dichotomy that Gendo/Adam hopes to achieve. Shinji and Asuka, both evangelion pilots, were hidden inside their respective evangelions to protect him from SEELE’s swarms. Rei, the other evangelion pilot, was standing with Gendo/Adam in front of Lilith. Rei was not fully human. She was a clone, with half of her DNA being Gendo’s dead wife’s, and the other half being Lilith’s. Because part of her soul was missing, residing inside Rei, Lilith was fated to never be able to heal, and remove her bindings.
Gendo/Adam told Rei to merge with him. Once that were done, Rei/Gendo/Adam would merge with Lilith: completing her, giving her the strength to remove her cross, and make all of humanity whole. Rei denied Gendo/Adam, and promptly merged with Lilith. Lilith, now complete with the part of her soul that was in Rei, and Rei’s mind, preceded to join with Shinji and his evangelion, instead. Rei said she loved Shinji, and desired his mind at the throne of the amalgamation of Lilith and Adam and the entirety of humanity. Lilith/Rei finds Shinji in his evangelion, surveying the devastation wrought by SEELE tearing through NERV’s feeble JSSDF defenses.
Near the second half of the movie, the final merge begins. From here on, the movie focuses on Shinji, and him being introspective. The Egg of Lilith, the container where all souls must go before they merge with Lilith, rises from beneath NERV, into Lilith’s hands, and she swells to planetary proportions, heavy with the collected souls of all humans. The merge is not fully realized, when Shinji, emerging from deep introspection, decides to halt and reverse the process. True, without ego borders, sadness and human drama would be extinguished, but so would pride and happiness. Lilith’s physical form dies, decomposes, and the egg explodes. The evangelion drifts into outer space.
Shinji wakes next to a sea of Lilith’s blood, LCL, primordial soup. Lying next to him is a hybrid of Asuka, Misato (his surrogate mother), and Rei: all objects of Shinji’s hidden lusts.
But perhaps Shinji again chained his mind about humanity’s worth, because he started to choke her. After a few seconds, Shinji stopped and cried. She looked up at him, and said, “how pathetic.”
The end.
Kabalistic themes abound in The End of Evangelion. Most obviously, on the ceiling of Gendo’s office is a picture of the Sepirothic Tree of Life, a kabalistic diagram for existence, and how God’s energy flows from Him, to humans, to the earth. According to kabalistic theory, God’s energy pattern can be categorized into three domains: the pillar of forms, the pillar of harmony, and the pillar of forces. When mercy and severity meet, it is possible to access the third column. The whole concept of merging the progenitor of angels, Adam, and the progenitor of humans, Lilith, to reverse-engineer a universal, godlike existence is very Kabalistic in nature. In Gendo’s office, his seat is directly below Keter, the topmost sphere, and the area that represents God at His purest we can experience Him. This nicely highlights Gendo’s god-complex by orchestrating humanity’s end. Before Shinji and his evangelion merge with Lilith, the Tree of Life appears around him, placing Shinji on Daath, the incomprehensible void between the finite human mind, and the infinite, supernal triad of cosmological forces: God, His infinite energy, and the infinite void into which infinite pours. In a scene before Rei goes with Gendo/Adam to Lilith, we see Rei floating in one vat of a system of vats, set up to look like the Tree of Life. In this instance as well, Rei’s vat corresponds to Daath, foreshadowing her immanent union with Lilith, then infinity.
Synthesis between the Tree of Life’s pillars occurs many other times, one of which being Rei, Asuka, and Misato, the three females involved in Shinji’s life enough for him to lust painfully for them. On all the Sephira, the stations of the tree of life, Rei closely corresponds to the infinite void, Binah. Before anything can exist, it first must be cloaked in death and barriers enough to dim God’s infinite light into the world of the finite. For this reason, Rei’s Sephira, Binah, is often called “the mother of all form. Rei often experiences anxiety because she possesses no real soul of her own. The physical form known as “Rei” knows she’s just a bag for Gendo’s wife’s DNA, and Lilith’s DNA. Through the series, she even died three times, only to be re-cloned. This is in the same way that Binah is also the “bag” for reality. To quote the Tao Te Ching, “We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.” Rei is just that bag. The virtuous aspect of Binah is “silence,” something Rei truly is. In the movie, she never speaks above a whisper. In the movie, we see a shot of one of the few things Rei has in her room, a pair of Gendo’s glasses. However, in this shot, the glasses were smashed. Throughout the series, Rei had always been obedient to Gendo, but due to her new love of Shiji, she was plotting against Gendo’s plan, and the glasses symbolize that “shattered” link. Rei’s developing feelings about Shinji show her character developing along Kabalistic lines: fatalism is the Klippot, or “that which slows down/disables God’s light.” By finding someone to fall in love with, she can overcome her more fatalistic attitudes.”
At the beginning of The End of Evangelion, Asuka is comatose in a hospital bed, deeply depressed about her inability to pilot her evangelion. Her extreme pride, the vice of Tipereth, led to hollowness, Tipereth’s Klippot. Her pride was backed by her devotion to being the best, “devotion” being the virtue of Tipereth, who hangs in the middle of the Tree, on the pillar of Harmony. Not surprisingly, that which Tipereth obligates is integrity, which Asuka lacks due to her quick-fire temper and willingness to impose upon others. Tipereth’s command is dare, which very much personifies Asuka. When she incapacitated twelve evangelions in three minutes is an excellent example of that.
Lastly, Misato Katsuragi is Netzach personified. Netzach is on the “forces” pillar, and represents something close to the Dionysian urge. With Hermetic (a large occult organization which uses much of Kabalah) symbology, Aphrodite is a very commonly used magical image for Netzach. Unfortunately, in the movie Misato died rather early on, but we still got to see some aspects of Netzach bleed through. Sometimes Netzach can project an illusion, a figure that isn’t quite what Netzach truly is. This illusion is projection: her, onto others. It may have looked like projecting, in a scene where she gave Shinji a deep kiss to drive home the gravity of her words. Though, it truly was a Netzachian action, because it was done for the very selfless reason of preventing global apocalypse. Responsibility is Netzach’s obligation, and the story certainly highlighted Misato’s difficulties with it, especially her domestic responsibilities. During Shinji’s introspective montage when all souls were becoming one, there was a scene of Shinji watching Misato have sex with a slightly accusatory look on his face. This is when Misato’s experiences and consciousness was merging with Shinji’s, and you could hear her protesting that she didn’t want to let her surrogate-child see that side of her.
The End of Evangelion is a confusing movie, even if you are intimately familiar with it’s backstory in Neon Genesis Evangelion. However, Anno Hideaki is no postmodern Dadaist when it came to his series and movie. There’s plenty to see and take in from the movie by watching it’s various Mise en Scène. I haven’t even started to write about the Freudian symbology, and the implications of lusting after someone who is half your mother. |
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