Ballad of Narayama (Narayama bushiko, 1982)

Imamura Shohei

Japan

130 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)

It is exceptionally difficult to review this film, almost as difficult as watching it. Imamura has never been known to be a particularly cheery director, and his subject matter certainly leaves little room for joviality: from radiation victims in Black Rain, a prostitute in Insect Woman, a serial killer in Vengeance Is Mine, to the grim life of the villagers in a remote 19th century hamlet.

The Ballad of Narayama is no ballad. It is a grim, depressing, and disturbingly bleak depiction of a village's struggle to survive amid the harsh unforgiving conditions of a remote mountainous region in Japan. Life for the peasants has no meaning outside of toil, procreation, and food. In fact, the need to ensure survival defines the morality of the villagers, and it is no boon to civilization.

Everything revolves around satisfying the primal instinct: perpetuating the species. Male babies are dumped outside to die for they cannot be sold unlike female babies. Marriages are arranged by availability of men and women and the ability of the families to sustain additional mouths. Justice is swift and merciless. The punishment for stealing food is death for the thief or the entire family. Once people turn 70, their sons are expected to carry them off to Narayama, where they are left to die, sparing their families the need to look after them. There is no love that can survive the call of the instinct, and even the fleeting displays of attachment end with a brief tantrum thrown by a man when is pregnant girlfriend is burried alive (we see him a couple of days later having sex with another woman).

The film follows one year in the life of a family from the village. Orin (Sakamoto Sumiko) is the aging mother of Tatsuhei (Ogata Ken), who is getting ready to go to Narayama. Her last year is thus spent in preparation of her famility for the trip. She must find another woman for Tatsuhei, whose wife had recently died, and ensure that her younger son, whom everyone calls 'stinker' (Hidari Tonpei), loses his virginity to a woman (as opposed to a dog) before it drives him insane. In addition, she must curtail the careless excesses of her grandson Kesa (Kurasaki Seiji), who has impregnated Matsu (Takada Junko) and has brought her into the family. In order to ensure that she will be taken to Narayama (which, given her excellent health, might not be welcome by her sons), Orin breaks her teeth on a stone. The last part of the film deals with Tatsuhei and Orin's trip to Narayama.

Since raw existence is the theme of the film, there is no surprise that images of sex and death permeate nearly every frame. For what is existence but sex for procreation (or animal lust otherwise) and murder for survival, whether hunting or punishment for 'justice'? Imamura frequently juxtaposes shots of nature and animals having sex or killing with shots of the villagers performing these very acts. Although not a particularly elegant, this is a very powerful way of bringing the basic point across: in the remote hamlet, human life has no meaning outside of the struggle to survive.

The little semblance of humanity is brought about by the barbaric belief in Narayama. This is the secret place where old people are taken to and abandoned to the "god of the mountain," a cruel, if expedient, way to deal with extra mouths to feed and people who can contribute little of the physical labor required to sustain the savage life in the mountains.

Imamura's objective and detached gaze is, however, weakened by his attempt to cling to some notion of humanity amidst the unrelenting brutality of the villagers. Although Tatsuhei killed his father for refusing to take his grandmother to Narayama, he is shown to struggle with conscience and his attachment to Orin when he is supposed to take her there. Only the unyielding will of the aging matriarch saves him from the same embarrassment. (As a side note, Imamura did miss a chance to show Tatsuhei's father, whose predicament and death would have been powerful statements.)

Upon his return from Narayama, Tatsuhei sees another villager unceremoniously disposing of his father by ditching his bound body down a cliff. The camera slowly follows the tumbling body as it becomes a corpse in mid-flight. It appears that Imamura wants to insist that the contrast between the loving and suffering Tatsuhei and that villager defines humanity in this existential setting. If this is so, then the claim is even more profoundly nihilistic for one act is not either more or less cruel and more or less life-affirming than the other. In the end, it is a frozen body as opposed to a broken one that the crows will have to gauge the eyes of.

As I mentioned, Ballad of Narayama is exceptionally difficult to watch. The graphic naturalistic scenes of various animals hunting and devouring their prey are unsettling, but even worse are the analogous scenes at the village. We have succeeded in putting the thin veneer of civilization over our instincts and now even call them 'base' and 'primitive', suggesting that our lives have some higher purpose. Yet, ultimately, our lives are also about existence and, if possible, procreation. It's just that our 'civilization' is simply means to ensure we do it in a less graphic fashion.

However, there is no longing for some 'true' or 'lost' human nature unsoiled by civilization in the film. Imamura's creation stands in stark contrast to the romantic longings of urbane philosophers aching for the noble savage. There is no such thing, says Imamura, as a noble (or ignoble) savage. Left to its own devices, the struggle to survive will hold no appeal to our refined senses and yet it still will be in strange harmony with nature. To be natural is to be both beautiful and revolting. And while there is savage beauty in Orin's sacrifice for her family, it is nonetheless revolting to see it done agains the backdrop of poetry about the falling snow.

May 29, 2002