BALLAD OF
NARAYAMA – a Classic Film review
Winner of several awards like the Palme d’Or in ’83, Grand
Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year, the Ballad of Narayama explores the legendary
practice of obasute where out in an
impoverished remote village in Northern Japan, the elderly, past the age of
seventy, are carried up to Mount Nara to offer themselves to the God of the
mountains. This practice is to make room for the next generation to survive on
the meagre crops grown on their own fields.
Written by Fukuzawa Shichiro and directed by Shohei Imamura
in 1983, the second version of ‘Ballad of Narayama’ is a remake of the original
version of the movie in 1958.
It is the story of Mother Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto) and her
family, trying to survive under extremely dismal life conditions in a village
community in Japan. Orin is pragmatic but also a traditionalist who believes
that her time is approaching to take the hike up Mount Nara. But before that
she must make arrangements for her sons and grandchildren to survive on what little
they have. She gives good advice to his
son to live the best way they can manage.
She also shows her daughter-in-law the tricks of getting food for all
around the hearth at mealtimes to keep the family together. Nevertheless, she
seeks relief from this drudgery by retiring from her worldly duties and submit
herself to the Mountain God to embrace death.
Completely isolated from the civilized world, this
impoverished little village community in northern Japan, needless to say, lives
by its own rules. They observe tribal rituals of a kind, exercise brutality in
the name of punishment and engage in depravity giving in to impulses to
celebrate life. Since life can be cruel, to avoid extra mouths to feed, baby
girls are often thrown out in the cold fields to die. Theft is punished by
wiping out a culprit’s family by burying them alive. There is no room for
sentiment. There is no time for remorse.
Yet it’s an engaging tale that documents a simple pattern of
basic existence in treacherous and severe life conditions in accordance with
the laws of life, often barbaric by contemporary urban standards. It’s indeed a
way of life where sense of duty overshadows human emotions. And so the aged
must choose the perilous way to ascend the Narayama
as a spiritual quest just to make room for the young. They must be allowed to
be left alone atop the mountain to perish.
An offbeat film that is thematically shocking and bizarre perhaps
fictitious too, Ballad of Narayama is a
departure from popular genres of movies that please the mind and embalm our
sensibilities. Director Shohei Imamura weaves vigor and poetry together in this
extraordinary tale of survival in the midst of malicious brethren and
intimidating nature.
The film, relentless in its depiction of the vagaries of
life in unimaginable conditions in 19th century rural Japan,
succeeds in holding us captive till the end. The characters are drawn with
unimaginable touches and the actors are nothing but faces that are real.
Music is haunting and evocative. The ambience is captivating
with half-lit interiors and sounds from the animal world create mystery and
speak of secrets that are still to be unearthed. Parallels drawn between the
animal kingdom and human existence, of primal instincts and passion, throb with
the beating of the drums and the melodious flute. And all this appropriately
coincides with seasonal changes.
Mastery at its best is evident in the photography of the
movie as well. It is like pages taken out of the National Geographic. Aerial
shots of nature’s bounty, like a painter’s canvas come alive, where colours
reflect the changing seasons and emotions of the village folk.
Unlike the earlier 1958 version of the movie that displayed
painted skies and stage props for sets, Imamura’s presentation is more realistic
and location driven and is a feast for the eye.
A timeless movie, ‘Ballad
of Narayama’ is a story of stoicism and submission to unspoken laws where one even accepts
death with dignity to make way for the future generations.
If one doesn’t mind
being punched by the morbid concept of death stalking us all, the movie is a
must for serious movie lovers just to enjoy the picturesque quality of a
masterpiece and the depiction of life in reality by an artist at his best,
Dola Dutta Roy ©
September 15, 2018
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