The Ballad of Narayama (DVD) ~ Sumiko Sakamoto (actor) Cover Art

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The Ballad of Narayama (DVD)

Sumiko Sakamoto (actor), Ken Ogata (actor) and Shohei Imamura (director)
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Synopsis

In the Japanese peasant village of Shinshu, it is the custom that when a person reaches the age of 70, they are taken up to Mount Narayama to die. While Orin approaches her time, she tries to settle the affairs of her sons.

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Title Note

Filmed on location in an abandoned mountain village in the Nagano Prefecture.

THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Director Shohei Imamura originally planned to open the film with a scene set in modern day Japan, in which a man is driving his mother to a senior citizen's home on top of a mountain. The story would have then flashed back to the 19th-century.

"I saw Kinoshita's version [of NARAYAMA BUSHI-KO] when I was still working as an assistant director and I was impressed by the way he used stylized sets and traditional music. But I always had the feeling that this story could be told in another way. In my version, I wanted to focus on the day-to-day lives of these mountain villagers, and particularly on the hard, physical work they have to do, and on their sex lives."--Imamura, in an interview with Toichi Nakata, reprinted in Cinemathque Ontario's book SHOHEI IMAMURA.

The film differs from Kinoshita's film and Fukuzawa's book in many respects. In the original stories, there is no sex or images of animals. Risuke was not a character, and Tamayan is eight years older. Songs are more important in the book as a form of education. Thieves are treated differently in the original stories, and Matsu is not from the thieves' family.

Product Quotation/Excerpt

"Old Orin hides in the shed. She has 33 teeth like a demon."--Kesa's song, which becomes picked up by all the villagers

Release Note

DVD Features:

Keep Case
Widescreen
Audio:
(unspecified) - Japanese
Subtitles - English

Product Notes

In a remote 19th-century village in Japan, food is so scarce that babies are left to die, and thieves who steal a few potatoes are buried alive with their families. And when the elderly reach the age of 70, they are banished to a frigid mountain so that their families won't have to feed them. The film begins one winter, as the 69-year-old Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto) prepares to ascend Mount Narayama. Meanwhile, one of her sons tries to convince her to live, while her other son, who has body odor problems, desperately searches for sexual release.

Director Shohei Imamura picks up where he left off in THE PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS and shatters the stereotype of Japanese as a polite, quiet people fond of tea ceremonies and geishas. A remake of director Keisuke Kinoshita's 1958 film NARAYAMA BUSHI-KO and based on MEN OF TOHOKU by Shichiro Fukuzawa, Imamura's film is profane, shocking, and disturbing. Scenes of human coupling are juxtaposed with scenes of insects and animals having sex, as if to emphasize the savagery of these villagers. Despite these lurid images, the film is a thought-provoking account of humans trying to preserve their dignity and traditions in the face of harsh conditions.

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