"The Ballad Of Narayama" (1958 version)

Tonight I watched a movie called "The Ballad Of Narayama" (1958) from Criterion. As you can guess from the title, it is a Japanese film. I've watched a fair share of Japanese films over the years. At CSUN, we've done full 15 week retrospectives on Kurosawa (in 2011) and Ozu (2015), and I've seen a couple by Mizoguchi and Suzuki, three by Kaneto Shindo of "Onibaba" fame, and maybe 8 or ten other films by less famous directors whose names I can't remember. So about 50 Japanese films altogether, give or take. I've even seen a few that were done like stage plays in the Kabuki style. "Narayama" was filmed this way, and I must admit that, for the first half hour or so, I didn't know if I was gonna make it.

It's not that it was a bad movie. The story moved along, though very slowly in the Japanese style. It's just that the Kabuki style can be a bit off-putting to a Western viewer, in large part because of the soundtrack. I mean no offense when I say that the Japanese language, at least when depicted in these types of movies set in medieval Japan, is very rough sounding. Also, with Kabuki, there is an offscreen musician who participates in the telling of the story through song. The subtitles show the lyrics to be following the plot, which is fine, but again, the style of singing is quite a bit different than what a Western viewer is used to.

None of that would be a major problem for me because I am open to all types of cinema (except Sandler, et al as you know), but what added to the rough Kabuki style was the fact that the movie was pretty doggone slow and the story took a while to develop. So, a half hour in, I was ready to turn it off.

Boy am I glad I didn't!

"The Ballad Of Narayama" tells the story of an old woman who lives in a small village out in the country. No date is given, so I simply say "medieval Japan", but anyhow, this woman lives with her son, a middle aged man whose wife has died, and his son - her grandson - an insufferable brat with no respect for his elders. He likens his granny to a demon.

The gist of the story is that older people in the village, when they reach 70 are expected to simply go away. To leave the village and walk down the road and through mountain passes until they come to a mythical - but real - place known as Narayama, where they will sit down and wait to die.

How horrible is that?

The young brat in the movie encourages his grandma, who is nearing 70, to get ready for her journey, but her son, the brat's father, is heartbroken. He doesn't want his mother, who is still very healthy, to go to Narayama. But she insists - feeling duty bound to tradition - and finally he takes her there himself.

If it sounds depressing, it is.

And it is filmed as a Kabuki stage play, with accompanying soundtrack. Not an easy watch.

But what makes it a great film.....and I just now debated with myself whether I should use the word "great" or not.......are the sets and the art direction, and the acting and drama in the final 30 minutes. They must have used several soundstages to create not only the village but the mountain wilderness of Narayama, which looks like a dark pastel painting out of an ancient myth. These are incredible sets, with backdrop landscapes. The lighting is otherworldly, and serves to heighten the drama as the man carries his mother up the mountain road toward this ordained Ending Place, where she will sit and wait for death, which will likely come from freezing before starving.

The movie was made in 1958. Another version in 1983 won a Palme d'Or at Cannes, but the 1958 one is the original, and on Criterion, and is supposed to be better, but the point is that it was made at the height of Japan's art cinema boom, when a lot of social commentary was taking place, something that would have been unheard of just a few decades before. Remember that Japan was a closed society, and it wasn't until about the 1800s that it was opened to the Western world. And it was Feudal, and Dictatorial as well. So when the country was modernised and their film industry took off, their great filmmakers like Yasujiro Ozu made movies that were rife with commentary on social issues. In Ozu's case, his theme was the subordination of women. Almost every movie he made was about that topic.

Now that Japan was Westernised, artists felt that they could comment. And so, in 1958, the director who made "The Ballad Of Narayama" was commenting on what we now know as elder abuse. In the case of this story, it was elder abuse in it's most extreme form. Old folks were literally expected to walk away, to the top of a mountain, and die. And modern Japanese directors, to their credit, wanted to comment on such things.

I will say that, after nearly turning the movie off in the first half hour, just because it was very slow and Kabuki, I wound up being blown away. I have cared for older people for a while now, first my Mom and now Pearl. So the story was very affecting toward the end.

But it is the final scene that really did it. It is a short scene, less than a minute, and it is an add-on to the ending. All of a sudden we are in modern day 1958 Japan, overlooking train tracks that run through the countryside. A train passes by, and the camera slowly lowers to focus on a large sign that is posted near the station.

I'd like to give you a spoiler and tell you what the sign says, because it blew me off the map.

But I just can't do it, because even though there is a 94% chance you will never see this movie, that still leaves a 6% chance that you will, and if you do I want you to see the ending for yourself.

That was all the news for today, except for good singing this morn. Super tired, of course. You can add your own descriptors to the tiredness and send 'em to me this time. This week it is up to you to describe the Sunday Night Tired. :)

Or just watch a Japanese Kabuki movie instead.

See you in the morning.  :):)