“The Ballad of Narayama” (1958)

The Ballad of Narayama

Grade: A+

Presented as a kabuki-inflected fable, the highly stylized Ballad of Narayama is one of the greatest and most unique — and most unsettling — Japanese films ever made.

Directing:

Filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita delivers beautiful visuals that take advantage of the film’s deliberate artifice, offsetting the harsh cruelty and impending doom of the storyline with colorful backdrops, artfully constructed sets and eye-catching one-take transitions.

Acting:

Lead actress Kinuyo Tanaka, nearing age 50 at the time of filming, portrays the nearly-70-year-old Orin with tremendous pathos and humility, a terrific performance of subdued emotion that stands out amongst the theatrical nature of the film, facing death with sympathy and stoicism; powerful acting matched by Teiji Takahashi as her conflicted son, Tatsuhei.

Writing:

The Ballad of Narayama is for open-minded filmgoers: do not be perturbed by the kabuki sprechgesang narration, nor the characters’ stubbornness to adhere to the assisted-suicide practice of ubasute. Uninfluenced by Western cinematic traditions (and Eastern cinematic traditions, for that matter), there’s no other movie experience quite like it.

Music:

A perfect example of sound and vision working in perfect harmony: the expressionist narration, filled with sharp vocals and eerie melodies, fits seamlessly within and adds to the film’s action, while the traditional Japanese folk music, composed by Chūji Kinoshita and Matsunosuke Nozawa and scored for shamisen and woodblock, adds palpable dramatic propulsion to the storyline, especially in the nearly wordless final act.

Ending (SPOILERS):

The finale, in which the grieving son finally leaves his resigned mother to die on the mountain of Narayama, is the film’s defining sequence; a stunning depiction of the lands of the dead that is fully immersive in its harrowing fantasy, driven entirely by Keisuke’s combo of dreamlike imagery and ancient music. Tragic, bleak, absolute.

What turns Narayama from stylish meditative fable to ambiguous avant-garde experiment is the final shot, in which the film shifts to modern-day black-and-white, showing a train pulling into a station, perhaps emphasizing how much things have changed, or how much things haven’t. Are we still sending the old off to die? Have we learned anything from past traditions? Should we fear the fateful inevitability of death? It’s a very strange yet stimulating scene to close on, raising more questions than answers, an ambiguous stroke of genius from Kinoshita.

“The harvest in autumn brings sorrow” — Narrator

Why The Ballad of Narayama gets an A+

A unique, thought-provoking, surreal fantasy, like Powell & Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948) and Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974).

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