THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA Movie Review

Narayama-Bushi-Ko

Even in an era in which debates about assisted suicide have become standard TV news sound bites, Imamura's magnificent The Ballad of Narayama—the tale of a 70-year-old woman who, by village custom, has reached the age when she must be taken to a mountaintop to die—retains all of its shocking, spellbinding power. Imamura intercuts the woman's struggle to tie up the loose ends of her life—most of which have to do with orchestrating her sons’ sex lives—with startling close-ups of insects, animals, and other natural wonders as they complete their sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrifying natural processes. In his portrait of humanity as simply another facet of the natural world, Imamura doesn't denigrate or belittle human beings; on the contrary, the vision of a universe filled with necessary cruelties leading logically to the acceptance of the ultimate sadness of existence (a particularly Japanese concept known as mono no aware) is, in the end, strangely reassuring. It's a unique, unforgettable picture.

NEXT STOP … In the Realm of the Senses, The Human Condition, Near Death

1983 129m/C/JP Ken Ogata, Sumiko Sakamota, Takejo Aki, Tonpei Hidari, Shoichi Ozawa; D: Shohei Imamura; W: Shohei lmamura; C: Maseo Tochizawa; M: Shinichiro Ikebe. Cannes Film Festival ‘83: Best Film. VHS HMV, FCT, KIV