Beloved and critically acclaimed in Japan, Kinoshita was either ignored in the West or labelled as old-fashioned and sentimental. Ballad of Narayama, told in kabuki style, complete with a curtain opening for the first scene and a narrator telling the story in song, shows us Kinoshita's perceived conservatism, as well as his taste for formal innovation that apparently baffled Western audiences. Orin is reaching the age of 70 and according to rural customs, she is to be brought to the top of Narayama mountain and left to die. Her son recently lost his wife and is supposed to take a widow from a neighboring village as his new spouse. His son wants to marry as well but the scarcity of food can't allow for too many mouths to be fed. While Orin's son tries to delay her departure to the mountain, her grandson can't wait to get rid of her. There is another old man in the village who is supposed to be brought to Mount Narayama as well but he desperately tries to evade his destiny, clinging on to life even though his family doesn't feed him anymore, while Orin has accepted her faith.
Shot in long, meditative scenes, Ballad of Narayama is more a showcase for Kinoshita's formal flourishes than a gripping story about aging and death. But the narrative advances on its own terms and highlights a few plot points that seem inconsequential at first glance, but reveal themselves to be essential in retrospect. The insistence on the scarcity of food, Orin's shame to still have all of her teeth, the interlude in which the inhabitants of the village react very harshly to a burglar are just some of the elements that play a fairly big role in the film and that had me wondering what the narrative is really about when I watched it for the first time. It seems to me that Kinoshita, above all, is interested in questions of community and inter-personal relationships. All of his movies discussed so far on this blog are set in small rural communities that have to react to elements that threaten or shake up their traditional bonds. In Ballad of Narayama, Kinoshita explores how such a community reacts to shortage of food and how it values the elderly and by that shows us how little space for transgression there was in traditional Japanese society.
There doesn't seem to be an overt critique on Kinoshita's part of the way the village disposes of its older members. But he doesn't shy away from showing us how unjust it is. With Immortal Love and Carmen Comes Home, we have already seen that societal structures are wholly arbitrary in Kinoshita's eyes and it is again of great concern here. How can it be that Orin has to leave this life simply because she has a certain age, although she is a valuable and still active member of society? Is she less valuable than her greedy grandson who does little to contribute to the community simply because of the age difference? This also entails questions of faith. Orin has created a reality for herself in which ascending Mount Narayama is the right and noble thing to do. Furthermore, she considers that the sooner she gets there the better she will be treated by the gods. She openly encourages the old man to go to Narayama in order to die. When her son brings her up the mountain, she is eerily at piece with herself, not uttering a single word during the entire voyage. The old man, on the other hand, has to be dragged up to Narayama, resisting bitterly. Two people react very differently to the same event. What separates them is the fact that one has faith and the other has not. One can see easily how that could be interpreted as a reactionary mindset.
I wrote that Ballad of Narayama does not provide a gripping story, but as can easily be seen here, Kinoshita still gives us a lot to think about, and the lack of goal-oriented narrative is certainly the film's strength. The fact that the film functions on its own terms makes it an interesting and frustrating viewing experience. The visual virtuosity also helps us over a few bumps. The mise en scene is highly stylized. Sets are wheeled around before our eyes, the lighting changes abruptly to highlight a single spot on the screen and switches back to normal, some scenes are bathed in red and green light (an expressionistic lighting Dario Argento brought to perfection a few years later), the decor can clearly be identified as theatrical props, the scenery is nothing more than a painting on cardboard. This artificial environment clearly echoes the long tradition of kabuki style cinema that was already highly popular in the 1910's before the Pure Film Movement set out to reform Japanese national cinema. Without a doubt, this very self-conscious citation of a Japanese cinematic tradition snubbed a lot of Western critics. But it is nothing short of powerful cinema.
Shot in long, meditative scenes, Ballad of Narayama is more a showcase for Kinoshita's formal flourishes than a gripping story about aging and death. But the narrative advances on its own terms and highlights a few plot points that seem inconsequential at first glance, but reveal themselves to be essential in retrospect. The insistence on the scarcity of food, Orin's shame to still have all of her teeth, the interlude in which the inhabitants of the village react very harshly to a burglar are just some of the elements that play a fairly big role in the film and that had me wondering what the narrative is really about when I watched it for the first time. It seems to me that Kinoshita, above all, is interested in questions of community and inter-personal relationships. All of his movies discussed so far on this blog are set in small rural communities that have to react to elements that threaten or shake up their traditional bonds. In Ballad of Narayama, Kinoshita explores how such a community reacts to shortage of food and how it values the elderly and by that shows us how little space for transgression there was in traditional Japanese society.
There doesn't seem to be an overt critique on Kinoshita's part of the way the village disposes of its older members. But he doesn't shy away from showing us how unjust it is. With Immortal Love and Carmen Comes Home, we have already seen that societal structures are wholly arbitrary in Kinoshita's eyes and it is again of great concern here. How can it be that Orin has to leave this life simply because she has a certain age, although she is a valuable and still active member of society? Is she less valuable than her greedy grandson who does little to contribute to the community simply because of the age difference? This also entails questions of faith. Orin has created a reality for herself in which ascending Mount Narayama is the right and noble thing to do. Furthermore, she considers that the sooner she gets there the better she will be treated by the gods. She openly encourages the old man to go to Narayama in order to die. When her son brings her up the mountain, she is eerily at piece with herself, not uttering a single word during the entire voyage. The old man, on the other hand, has to be dragged up to Narayama, resisting bitterly. Two people react very differently to the same event. What separates them is the fact that one has faith and the other has not. One can see easily how that could be interpreted as a reactionary mindset.
I wrote that Ballad of Narayama does not provide a gripping story, but as can easily be seen here, Kinoshita still gives us a lot to think about, and the lack of goal-oriented narrative is certainly the film's strength. The fact that the film functions on its own terms makes it an interesting and frustrating viewing experience. The visual virtuosity also helps us over a few bumps. The mise en scene is highly stylized. Sets are wheeled around before our eyes, the lighting changes abruptly to highlight a single spot on the screen and switches back to normal, some scenes are bathed in red and green light (an expressionistic lighting Dario Argento brought to perfection a few years later), the decor can clearly be identified as theatrical props, the scenery is nothing more than a painting on cardboard. This artificial environment clearly echoes the long tradition of kabuki style cinema that was already highly popular in the 1910's before the Pure Film Movement set out to reform Japanese national cinema. Without a doubt, this very self-conscious citation of a Japanese cinematic tradition snubbed a lot of Western critics. But it is nothing short of powerful cinema.
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