Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

bartolomeudebensafrim The movie is like a sequence of floating woodblock prints. almost every single shot is of astonishing beauty. the music is equally remarkable and when the narrative, the visual beauty and the music combine, it is too much to handle (i cried as if my own mother was going to Narayama).i was a bit upset by the immorality of it, by the absurdity of it all. i am familiar with japanese culture and understand their unique relationship with death and honor - but this movie pushes everything to a strange painful limit.the tremendous performance by Kinuyo Tanaka (Orin) makes the climb a very moving experience. the detail of the new wife's affinity towards the kind woman that is about to leave is just brilliant (the novel must be quite good aswell). Orin shows her the secret trout fishing spot and there is this immense pain that strikes us, this notion of the absurd amount of knowledge that lives inside elders, and of all the time that could still be used to learn and bond if it wasn't for the Narayama tradition.the photography is just magical. the final scenes, after the warm coloured intimacy of the village, seem like the most desolate scenario conceivable - it makes something like Peter Jackson's Mordor, in LOTR, look like a kindergarden. just beautiful from start to finish. this is a the kind of movie that reminds me of what cinema was all about.

willwoodmill Classic Japanese cinema is something that isn't very popular here in the west. However several classic Japanese films still have large followings, the films of people like Akira Kurosawa, and Masaki Kobayashi have found relatively large audiences. Nevertheless there are still countless hidden gems that remain nearly completely unknown, even among the fans of Kurosawa and Kobayashi. These hidden gems rank among some of the most underrated films of all time. These films can come from the silent era, to postwar Americanized Japan. One such film that comes from the latter is Ballad of Narayama. Ballad of Narayama is a film that is designed to protest euthanasia, through the film's central topic of Ubasute, Ubastute is the feudal Japanese practice, where the elderly and crippled are carried up mountains and left to die of exposure. The film is about a small isolated Japanese town in the mountains during feudal times. In this small town their is an old women by the name of Orin, (played by Kinuyo Tanaka, who starred in several of Kenji Mizoguchi's films.) who is approaching her 71st birthday. This may not seem like a big deal to us, but in the small-town this is shameful. In their eyes she should have been taken to Narayama, which is the mountain that villagers use to dispose of their elderly, years ago. The villagers see her as selfish for sticking around for so long, and to make things worse she still has a full set of teeth! (Again that doesn't seem important to us, but it is to them.) The film tells the story of how Orin's son Tatushei (played by Teiji Takahashi, who collaborated with Yasujiro Ozu several times.) must face the fact that he will eventually have to take Orin up to the top of the mountain. Ballad of Narayama was directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, who while extremely skilled, is almost completely unknown. And he does wonders in Ballad of Narayama. Ballad of Narayama is one of the most unconventional films I have ever scene. Whether it's the singing narration, or the strangest transitions ever. Ballad of Narayama is always doing something to keep you invested and interested. I've gone over two paragraphs without mentioning Ballad of Narayama's (arguably) strongest aspect, it's lighting, set design, and cinematography. All of these combine to make Ballad of Narayama one of they most beautiful films ever made. The beauty really is impossible to describe, but Ballad of Narayama is one of a few films were just the visuals are able to evoke an emotional response. Another thing you'll notice about the film's visuals is that the film resembles a play. The film opens with a strange man standing in front of a curtain and he introduces the film to us and then the opening credits happen, and then the curtain opens and the film begins. The sets also seem very stage-like, and I mean that in the best way possible. There's something about the sets and lighting that just makes the films so alive and vivid. Every shot in the film pays such close attention to detail, it just feels like you're watching a feudal Japanese village.Ballad of Narayama comments on much more than euthanasia, though that is the central focus. Like most postwar Japanese films Ballad of Narayama criticizes the traditional Japanese view of marriage. The idea that you always have to be married to be happy, and there is no such thing as a single life. The film also discusses the concept of justice and punishment, in one scene a character is caught stealing from one of the villagers, and all the villagers, then round up all of the thief's family and all of there possessions, and distribute it amongst themselves. Orin tries to protest this, saying it isn't right for the villagers to punish the thief's family for what he did. But even with all of its other social commentary, it's undeniable central focus is euthanasia. Rarely do films comment on topics that are this serious or controversial. It's not like Orin doesn't want to die, but she needs her son to carry her up to the top of Narayama, and her son doesn't want to be the one who kills her. Which makes it much more complex and controversial. I don't think I've ever even seen another film that dared touch on this topic. Ballad of Narayama takes its subject matter very seriously, yes their are happy and slightly comic moments in the film, the same way you would find them in a Kurosawa film. But when it needs to, Ballad of Narayama can bring its audience to tears. Ballad of Narayama was remade by famed Japanese new wave director Shohei Imamura in 1983, Imamura's version won the Palme d'Or that year. And that is probably the most recognition the original 1958 film has received since its release. Well that or when in 2013 it became the last film to be added to Roger Ebert's great movies list before he died, but unfortunately even with the acclaim its received, Ballad of Narayama still remains one of the most criminally unknown films of all time.9.4

kurosawakira Made available on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, Kinoshita's highly stylized exploration of the Narayama story is a deliciously stunning exploration of the possibilities of colour, and has some of the most inventive use of transition in film.You might be familiar with the far more explicit and naturalistic film version of the same story from 1983, made by Shôhei Imamura, and knowledge of that film greatly enhanced my viewing of this. These two films are worlds apart, in fact so much that it feels that Imamura's film openly converses with this, since its theatricality seems to almost provoke the kind of hyper-naturalism inherent in the Imamura. Another film that enriches this is Kinugasa's "Jigokumon" ("Gates of Hell", 1953), available on Region B Blu-ray courtesy of the Masters of Cinema, and soon to be released by Criterion, as well.I didn't know much of Kinoshita before this, only the biographical information concerning his relationship with Masaki Kobayashi, who served as his apprentice and whose film "Harakiri" (1962) Kinoshita openly disliked (he reversed his opinion later). I think it's somewhat ironic since Kobayashi's use of lighting certainly finds a compeer here, and I think this definitely encouraged "Kwaidan" (1964) to go to the lengths it did.

Harry T. Yung In terms of movie making, Ballad of Narayama is not unlike shooting of a live play, with sets of distant mountains, stage lightning, and actors at a distance. There are however also close ups, where required, so that we know that we are watching a film rather than a live shooting of a play.Most effective is the narration of the story through a ballad, in the kabuki style. Very loosely, I suppose one can compare it with Cat Ballou, in the sense that at intervals, the ballad takes over in moving the story forward. But the music is obviously entirely different. In Narayama the desolate style of the kabuki singing and haunting mood of the Japanese lute add so much power to some of the heart wrenching scenes.The story is an allegory on the most fundamental of human tragedies, the insufficiency of resources. By tradition and custom, old people of the poor village are taken to the distant mountains of Narayama and left to die when they reach seventy. In this story which brings us right into close-up contact with a family, the old woman Orin's son had just lost a wife through accident and about to take a new one, a recently widowed woman from the next village. Meanwhile, his young son wants to marry. Both involve adding another mouth to be fed, in a year when harvest is particularly poor. But while the son and new daughter-in-law, in their love for Orin, want to delay taking her to Narayama, the callous grandson wants to get rid of the old grandmother as soon as possible.The old woman, in hope of easing her son's agony, always talks about going to Narayama cheerfully as if it's like the Elves going "into the west". Her enthusiasm may even spread to the audience, although her son knows exactly what it means and tries to hold back his anguished tears every time the subject is mentioned. When this finally comes, we see the son carrying Orin on his back, struggling up rugged mountain paths and begging his mother to speak to him one last time. Orin steadfastly refuses to say anything, knowing that any exchange would just make the parting that much more painful. At the ghostly desolate mountain top, he leaves her, among scattered skeletons of those who went before and preying carrion crows, and dashes sway in tears, running madly downhill, when snow starts to come down. And that's a good sign, because the soil will be better next year for a better crop. A most heart-wrenching scene.When we read about famines that kill millions, it's something that is in such a macro scale that it is beyond a personal experience. Watching Narayama, the audience sees how the village can only afford to eat pure white rice just once a year, during the Narayama Festival. We see how the next village is anxious to send over the widow to Orin's family as early as possible because she can start eating there. We see how the heartless grandson can only think of getting rid of the grandmother to make room for his own wife. We see how eating is the biggest ritual, the single most important thing is life, and a bowl of white rice is consumed with almost religious zeal. We see all these, as well as the resulting Narayama ritual.The ultimate irony is that Orin, approaching 70, is as productive a member of the family and any other, because she possesses skills of catching fish nobody else does. She also has a full set of perfect teeth. In order to prove that she qualifies to go to Narayama, she deliberately crashes some of her front teeth on a stone mill. Is this the noblest of human sacrificing spirit or simply the love any mother would have for her children? You can decide.