The Ballad of Narayama

The Ballad of Narayama

“The Ballad of Narayama” is a stunning and beautifully crafted Japanese film that tells a story of shocking cruelty. What a gap it opens between its origins in kabuki style and its subject of starvation in a mountain village! The tradition in the village is to carry people over seventy years old up the mountain and leave them there to die of exposure.

In his 1958 film, Keisuke Kinoshita tells the story with deliberate artifice, using an ornate set with a path next to a gurgling brook, matte paintings for backgrounds, mist on dewy evenings, lighting that drops backgrounds to black at dramatic moments then brings up realistic again. Some exteriors have black foregrounds and bloody red skies; others use grays or blues. As in kabuki theater, there is a voiceover narrator dressed all in black who explains what’s happening.

This artifice supports an intensely charged emotional story. Orin played by Kinuyo Tanaka is 70 years old widow whose resignation before her traditional fate stands out against the violent protest of her neighbor Mata played by Seiji Miyaguchi. Their familial attitudes are oppositional: Orin’s son Tatsuhei played by Teiji Takahashi loves his mother and has no desire to carry her up the mountainside while Mata’s family has already cut off his food supply so he wanders around like a desperate scavenger begging Orin for rice which he greedily wolfs down.

Orin’s serene acceptance juxtaposes against her son’s reluctance to execute his mother’s death sentence while Kesakichi (Danshi Ichikawa) Orin’s nasty grandson can’t wait for her demise and starts singing songs mocking the fact that she still has all thirty-three original teeth at seventy. Villagers join him as they appear like vindictive chorus chanting their song implies demons made Orin keep those teeth after selling her soul. To qualify for execution herself Orin bites down hard on stone thus showing bloody stumps when villagers see again.

The story centers around Orin’s goodness and acceptance. In particular, note her kind greeting for Tama (Yuko Mochizuki), a 40-year-old widow she has picked out as the best new wife for her widower son. Known for being able to catch trout when no one else can, on a foggy night she takes Tama through the woods and shows her a secret place beneath a rock in the brook where there is always a trout to be found. This was never revealed to Orin’s first daughter-in-law; she wants to die before her first grandchild is born and rid the village of another hungry mouth.

Some will find Orin’s behavior strange. And so it is. Perhaps it is meant as praise of Japanese ability to present acceptance in face of awful things during the immediate post-World War Two years, but that seems too easy. You can create any number of sets of parallels with Kinoshita’s parable and make them work, but that one fits especially well.

Keisuke Kinoshita (1912-1998) belonged to Akira Kurosawa’s generation. His mind was like an idea factory he made 42 films in his first23-year career by jumping between periods and genres at high speed. He loved movies from an early age; while still in high school he worked on a film shot in his hometown, then ran away to a studio in Kyoto only to be sent back home by his family who later relaxed their opposition when they saw how serious he was about becoming a filmmaker himself despite having no college education or connections whatsoever except as set photographer at Toho Studios which he joined after several years spent submitting screenplays until one caught its chief’s eye.

He made dramas, musicals, thrillers everything except another film quite like “The Ballad of Narayama.” It leaves an unforgettable mark with its matter of fact juxtaposition between fate and artfulness: “When we reach seventy,” says Tatsuhei’s second bride Tama ,”we shall go together up Narayama.”

The Criterion Collection has released “The Ballad of Narayama” on DVD for your viewing pleasure! Thanks go out to Wikipedia for some resea.

Watch The Ballad of Narayama For Free On Gomovies.