ThiefHott Too much of everything

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Vonia The Ballad of Narayama (Japanese: Narayama bushikô) (1983) (Not to be confused with the superior original version from 1958) Not my type of film, Cruel ubasute custom, Harsh graphic sex scenes, National Geographic, Cringed through significant film. http://all-that-is-interesting.com/ubasute/2 (Tanka (短歌 tan-kah) poems are unrhymed short poems that are five lines long, with the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable format. #Tanka #PoemReview

writerasfilmcritic This is an odd movie in which scenes of natural predation are pretentiously interspersed between innocuous, routine events, serving as thematic signposts that attempt to define and legitimize the director's morbid fascination with senseless brutality. The disheveled, unkempt, often filthy characters never gain our sympathy. Even those who come closest ultimately become immersed in the brutality of the story. The kindly grandmother casually tricks her youngest son's pregnant paramour into spending the night with a thieving family whom she knows are about to be executed by the murderous villagers. Her strong-willed son, the only person who briefly displays any palpable sentiment, participates in the execution with little concern even for the grandchild that will never be born. The victims aren't merely killed but captured in nets, thrown in a hole, and buried alive, a brutal twist to the supposed necessity of the horrible collective deed. Later, the healthy grandmother bashes her front teeth out so she'll look the part when it's her time to "go to the mountain." All through the movie, this "final journey" is alluded to as if going off to die on a mountainside up in the clouds, a place of ethereal beauty, is somehow a sacrifice fraught with spiritual significance. Unfortunately, the place where the old people are carried is nothing more than a grotesque, stinking bone yard full of broken skeletons and decomposing bodies, serviced by a flock of fat, greedy crows that pick at the dead and impatiently await their next meal. After hauling his mom up the mountain on a pack-board, the strong son simply leaves her there because she insists once again that is how it must be. Before leaving, he sees his selfish neighbor dropping off his troublesome, disabled father, kicking the terrified old man over a cliff while yelling, "Dad, go to the mountain!" The poor, senile old man, trussed up in a net, goes tumbling down the rocks like a cartwheel, bashing his brains out on the way down. This depressing story is supposed to uplift us? This is "beautiful? It's a real comment on the emptiness of our times that so many here would even begin to believe that. I'm skeptical of the notion that this film was based on fact. It comes off like an exercise in racist propaganda. I may be wrong but I think it doubtful that even primitive and isolated Japanese peasants were that uncaring and brutal.

flautist_englishdork This is actually an extraordinarily beautiful film, if one has even the remotest understanding of Japanese culture around that time period. The harshness of life in Japan made the sort of society in which people went to "be with their loved-ones" and "be with the God of the Mountain" at age 70 completely necessary. The focus of the film is the struggle for survival, and more than that, prospering, in the harsh environment of c. XIX Tohoku. The exploration of this topic takes the viewer into a study of survival through strict rules, and prospering through sexual relationships. The scenes of sexual intercourse serve to portray that even in sexual situations, the Japanese as a people have never viewed nature and animals as separate from ourselves.

Aaron Kidd "Ballad of Narayama" is ultimately a film about survival.Set during the Meiji Period, the inhabitants of a tiny Japanese farming village are forced to embrace extreme tactics to ensure that they stay alive.Male babies are instantly killed with hardly any remorse, while females are usually sold. Stealing food is punishable by death, which we see in a very disturbing scene where an entire family are buried alive due their father's crime.And, ultimately, the elderly are sent to die at the base of a mountain called Narayama when they reach the age of 70.Despite the depressing tone, there is a lot of humor in this film, as well. The songs that the villagers sing about each other are pretty funny, and it's difficult not to laugh at Old Orin trying to knock her own teeth out with a rock.Speaking of Old Orin, the actress who player her (Sumiko Sakamoto) gives a wonderful performance in this film. She had her teeth surgically removed for this role, and gives a realistic depiction of a 70-year-old woman even though she was in her 40s when the film was made."Ballad of Narayama" is indeed a depressing film in many aspects, but it's also filled with humor and offers a better understanding of what life must be like in these types of situations.