The Ballad of Narayama
Narayama bushiko (1958)
Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
In a food-scarce village with falling annual rice harvest, reinforced by local customaries and extreme poverties, the elderly beyond the age of 70 must make his/her way up to the peaks of Mount Narayama (with the aid of a family member), where he/she would await death in a make-believe ‘paradise’. It’s taboo for one to possess a good set of teeth at old age or to live to see one’s great-grandchildren, as this signifies good health and longevity, meaning there’d be less food to go around.
This is a touching, deeply humane tale of one such elder who, despite her often unreciprocated kindness for the people around her, would be making such an inevitable self-sacrificial journey. The eventual cruel passage is nothing short of heart-wrenching, the reluctant son torn between piety and social obligation.
One day, Yuan Gu’s father and mother decided that his grandfather was too old to be useful, so they decided to get rid of him. Yuan followed his father, who used a litter to carry his grandfather to the mountains. After the father abandoned the old man, Yuan grabbed the litter and brought it home. When his father asked him why, he replied, “Perhaps later you too would become too old and will not be able to work again. Merely in order to do the right thing, I have retrieved it.” Terrified and ashamed, his father realised the error of his ways, retrieved the old man, and treated him in a filial manner.
This common Chinese cautionary tale of filial piety we were told as children immediately came to mind as I was viewing the film. Of course, the similarities between the two stops at the act of abandonment - the piety as illustrated in the Chinese tale is an insincere guarding of self-interest, of a “do unto others what you’d others unto you”, or a fear of retribution/karma.
The Ballad of Narayama, on the other hand, is closer to Ozu Yasujiro’s inevitable passage of time and one’s helplessness against it. Despite our unspoken reluctance, things will come to pass and to an end.
I am a stranger to Japanese kabuki theatre but the theatrical treatment in the film brilliantly conveyed the swift change in moods and passage of time, through masterful and fluid control of lighting and change of stage sets, like you’d an actual play. Despite the obviousness in the stage set-ups, the mise-en-scene is gorgeously and lushly adorned and richly detailed, blurring the real and the fake, film and theatre.
This is highly impressive considering this is way pre-CGI. Almost like what one could imagine if Moulin Rouge was to be made in the mid of last century.
I can’t wait to see the 1983 remake by Shohei Imamura, also a Cannes Palme d’Or winner.
Masterpiece.
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