The Ballad of Narayama
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Movie Reviews of The Ballad of Narayama
Movie Review: One of the best movie I've ever seen
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's brutal, but for people who live in this harsh environment these brutal laws are the only chance to survive. I've read many books about the Russian eskimos and the other people of the North who live in similar conditions - they have very similar brutal laws and customs. Strict children selection, severe punisments for theft - all these realities could be found in the North as well. Like in this Japanese village, the old people, when they can no longer work, go to the forest, make the final fire and freeze to death. This movie is not a fantasy, but the reality of survival in the harsh environment. This movie shows how the people live close to the nature, struggle with it, yet truly integrated into it? Excellent staging, great actors make this film a true masterpiece.Movie Review: FINALLY! I HAVE WAITED FOR 20 YEARS FOR THIS MOVIE TO COME TO DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
I have collected thousands of movies of all genre, and perhaps 2-300 are Japanese films. I have whined and nagged Amazon to list a DVD edition of THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA. It is simply the best movie I have ever seen.
I'm pre-ordering it, praying that the print is worthy of
this masterpiece. If it is, I'm ordering more for friends.
If you go see my other reviews, you'll see I don't rave; rather, most- often, I am sharply critical. But here there is not one filmic aspect - direction, photography, concept, execution, characters, suspense, acting, poignancy, adventure, humor, pathos and on and on that isn't superb..
My collecting days are complete. Sell short your Amazon stock; No movies are necessary after this ultimate cinematic high. Sorry, Amazon. Nirvana!
Movie Review: A new meaning to "going up to the mountain"...
Summary: 4 Stars
Definitely got my attention since I'm 69, and if I were living in the poor little village, I'd have to be packing my final bags. Except that I wouldn't be allowed any bags..it would be just me and the snow up there all alone to wait for the end. BUT I'll enjoy life while I can right now and that includes watching this beautiful film...the cinamatography is terrific, the actors are super, the footnotes include education on Japanese folkways and language...all in all a film to remember and recommend.Movie Review: Imamura's Inhumanism: heartless in the literal sense
Summary: 3 Stars
You know it's a Shohei Imamura film when you see someone urinating in the first scene. Soon after, defecation makes an appearance too. Imamura glories in grotesquery like no other major Japanese director. Even at his nicest ("Warm Water Under a Red Bridge", my favourite film of his), he really likes bodily functions and awkward, unexpected acts of violence. Imamura's early film "The Pornographers" was about a sleazy, incompetent porn merchant who thoroughly fails in life. His later film "Dr. Akagi" expanded the scope, depicting pretty much all of pre-war Japanese society as bumbling and grotesque. "The Ballad Of Narayama" is set earlier, in the 19th century, but it also suggests that Imamura is unique among Japanese artists, in that he has very little love for Japanese culture and history.
The peasants in this film live in a harsh environment and have to struggle, but their poverty is not necessarily desperate. They have stores of food, and some of them have firearms and horses. They live to seventy, and often are in good health at that age. Their houses are old, but fairly large, with elaborate layers of straw-furnished lofts. But, they are always shown wearing filthy rags. The rags by themselves are unsurprising. For instance, Kurosawa's peasants in "Seven Samurai" are also ragged and poor, and prone to infighting. But, the last scene of "Seven Samurai" shows the peasant girls dressed in bright, pretty clothes for a rice-planting ceremony, which has a spirit of collective harmony. Imamura's film never shows any such event. Everyone always looks drab.
Continuing the contrast, Kurosawa's peasants could be cruel, like when the village elders gave away one guy's wife to a group of bandits. But that was a singular event, caused by an external threat, and traumatized the entire village for a long time. In "The Ballad Of Narayama," the peasants think nothing of killing unwanted children, or selling them into slavery. There are no bandits around; this is widely practiced and viewed as routine.
There is no compassion in Imamura's film. The values of the peasant society revolve around saving face. The husband of the old woman Orin deserted the family years ago (or tried to). Orin hates him, but not because he abandoned her. Her only grievance is that he embarrassed the family.
Family loyalty exists only in the form of subservience to the head of the household. Only the eldest son in a family is viewed as a human being. Younger sons ("yakko") are used as slaves. They are despised and pushed around by the entire village, and have no hope of ever getting married. This causes them to engage in deviant sexual practices, which are gleefully expounded upon by Imamura.
The peasants have a form of collective justice, where they all gather to accuse and judge possible criminals. However, it is clearly shown that this ritual can also serve as an excuse to loot somebody's house and take all his food. If someone is "convicted," his entire family is horribly killed, which evokes no remorse in anyone. Orin, the film's de facto protagonist, coldly deceives a young girl into going back to her parents' house, when it has already been condemned. The girl's husband is upset, but not for long; he finds another girl quickly.
Oh, and the head of a household eventually has to "go to the mountain," which means getting taken to a desolate wilderness and being abandoned there to starve to death. The only appearances of any religious beliefs in the film all revolve around this ritual.
This is a grim world. Imamura scrupulously chooses every image to reinforce its grimness. Scenes of dialogue are separated by shots of insects, reptiles and rodents -- mantis eating frog, mantis eating mantis, snake eating mouse. The sex scenes are followed by shots of rodents mating. The subtext is unsubtle -- life here is governed by reptilian, rodent instincts and force.
In another time, this film might have been a novel in the style of "critical realism." It has a lot in common with Zola's The Earth, which attacked French peasantry in the 19th century in much the same way as "The Ballad Of Narayama." Like the critical realists, Imamura uses earthy details that other film-makers demurely gloss over (Imamura's sex scenes are not graphic, but they're obscenely carnal in tone) to create a sense of authenticity. But, also like the critical realists, he might not be entirely reliable. The chilling scenes in the "graveyard" at the end of the film are visually striking; the content is horrifying, impossible to forget. But that's exactly the part that isn't real! It's a fanciful image, a bad dream.
But although that scene is very dark, its unearthly coldness gives it a certain harsh majesty. For that very reason, Imamura interrupts the scene's gloomy dignity with yet another grotesque image, involving the old man who doesn't want to go to the mountain. He purposely doesn't allow the film to become poetic.
"The Ballad Of Narayama" is not a "lyrical drama." Imamura's worldview in this film might be described as "inhumanism." The film viscerally participates in the lives of the peasants; it is alternately ice-cold and searingly carnal. But it leaves no room for sympathy. What little shines through is quickly drowned out by an all-powerful fatalism.
Movie Review: great film making- story wants more
Summary: 3 Stars
THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA
This is a movie with wonderful cinematography & a well defined script given that its purpose is to show life on the hard edge of survival. Just the kind of movie I would expect to like. The images on screen are bold, bleak or disturbing & sometimes all three. In the end though, I rate this as no higher than 3 stars.
The hard edge of survival here is more because of the hardened demeanor the characters in the movie take toward their lot in life. I saw more food & less human spirit in this show than any other hard circumstance movie I've seen. In VIDAS SECAS a family struggles against overwhelming odds of place, society & their own talents but they don't struggle from lack of heart. They want to change their circumstances & aren't afraid to take responsibility to effect that change. In Narayama there is no heart, no breath & no desire for any change. They only want to get to the next meal & finally death. There are plenty of meals in the show.
I believe I understand why this movie was written & directed as it is but I don't think it serves any purpose except to highlight the movie maker's skill. That's a legitimate goal but I wasn't in a film appreciation class when I saw it. I can recommend it for a one time viewing. Some scenes will disturb you. Some shots are breathtaking in simplicity & clarity. I have no trouble believing that there were villages like Narayama in the world. I just don't believe that all of the people in them were so sold out to being powerless. Most human groups have a rebel or two. Rebellion in Narayama would be the belief that the citizens could make their own life better. Whether the rebel won or lost the movie needed that, at least it did for me.
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