It's not difficult to understand why Ballad of Narayama won the Palme d'Or in 1983. Beautifully filmed and probably just about having a little something for everyone, I felt that this was without a doubt the best of the Shohei Imamura movies shown today to commemorate his passing last year, and on what would have been a celebration of his birthday should he still be alive today.

Like the timeless setting in The Profound Desire of the Gods, Imamura's story, a reinterpretation of the book Men of Tohoku by Fukuzawa Shichiro, takes place ambiguously "100 years ago" within a self-supporting nomad group of villagers atop a mountain, where tribal life, ritualistic and tightly knit, involves a peculiar practice when one reaches the age of 70. There's forceful retirement, where the elderly has to ascend Narayama and live out the rest of the days there. The mountain top is the senior citizen's home, and everyone dutifully follows this without question.

And I'd like to reflect on this particular point before dwelling on the others. Watching Ballad brings to mind the thought of death, and how would one decide how to go meet the maker. There's absolutely nothing worse than anticipating the coming of death, or to the point of sadism, to actually add a catalyst to it. The final 30 minutes is nothing short of powerful, where son Tatsuhei (Ken Ogata) journeys with mother Orin (Sumiko Sakamota) up the incline. It balances the stoic, unspoken bonds (one of the conditions in the ascent is to maintain silence) of love with the coming of the reaper with every step inching closer to the summit where the gods are, set against beautiful mountainous scenery. My words fall short of describing this awesome moment, and it's something you just have to see for yourself. And with that, comes the point of dying with dignity. If I choose to go, that's the way I would prefer too, rather than screaming, kicking up a fuss, and cursing everyone else.

The movie follows through this anticipation of the journey with preparation, and showcases the life of Orin and her family, which is nothing short of entertaining with the many facets thrown in. It's drama, comedy and loads of sex in the veins of the 40 Year Old Virgin, but these are basically there as Orin tries her best to tie up loose ends and puts in place some continuity within her family members before her time is up. Things like taking an involvement to ensure one of her sons doesn't stay a virgin (this bit is just plain hilarious with the way it was developed),and with lots of love, teaching her daughter-in-law how to provide for the family.

It's curious to note that Imamura has plenty of National Geographic like shots of various animals, like snakes, toads, owls and crows, and more often than not, showing them in various stages of copulation, or worse, devouring one another. These shots are used as fillers, as if to either remind you before or after a scene, that when boiled down to basics, we are still animals with our primal instincts still very much intact. And if we're left to our own community devices, mob justice, just like the one in Profound, is often very brutal with emotions running high, and this particular thread, including the cunning involvement of Orin, was one that I found quite hard to sit through - the motivation for a daughter-in-law (one that she didn't approve of) was basically to provide for her own kin, but the stark punishment met out, in my opinion, unforgettable, unforgivable, and very excessive.

Ballad of Naray ama deserves every accolade bestowed upon it, and amongst the Imamura movies seen to date, this is something that I would recommend without hesitation. Forget the synopsis which made it sound boring, the real deal is within the film itself.

This remake of "The Ballad of Narayama" has a very respectable rating of 7.7 and lots of very positive reviews. However, I found the film to be an endurance contest of unpleasantness. It also made its point through TONS of what my daughter terms 'sledgehammer symbolism'--where the director tries so hard to put forth their symbolism that it all becomes too tiresome and too obvious. Subtle this movie isn't!

This film is set in a time and place in Japan where life is very, very hard and starvation is the norm. To deal with this, the lovely people in these mountains have a tradition--that their elderly should go up in the mountains to die when they reach 70 so that they aren't a burden. Additionally, infanticide, stealing food and all other forms of nastiness abound in this hellish place. But director/writer Shôhei Imamura doesn't stop there--the film also has scenes of bestiality, LOTS of sex scenes (not the sexy kind, either),a family being buried alive, a woman knocking out her own teeth, a guy tossing his father down a mountain and animal abuse! Somehow Imamura seems to have forgotten necrophilia and incest!

As far as the symbolism goes, Imamura shows innumerable scenes of animals eating each other or copulating. It's VERY obvious he's trying to draw a parallel to say that these people are living like animals...too obvious. Plus, call me crazy, but I don't want to see all these scenes of animals killing each other or having sex!! Life is too short to watch stuff like this and although "The Ballad of Narayama" has nice production values, the thoroughly unpleasant nature of the film make it hard to recommend to anyone.

I found this Japanese film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I read the description of the story and found the title intriguing, and I hoped it would deserve four stars out of five critics give it. Basically in a small rural village in 19th century Japan, according to tradition, once a man or woman reaches the age of 70 they must go through a practise known as ubasute, where they will travel to a remote mountain to die of starvation. The story follows 69-year- old Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto) and in sound health of course, but she knows that a neighbour father had to be dragged up the mountain by his son. Orin resolves to avoid clinging onto life beyond her term and spending a year arranging all her family affairs and the village for when she passes away. These include Orin severely punishing a family who are hoarding food, and helping her younger son lose his virginity, but in the end she ultimately faces up to tradition and is taken up the mountain. Also starring Ken Ogata as Tatsuhei, Tonpei Hidari as Risuke "Smelly", Aki Takejô as Tamayan, Shôichi Ozawa as Katsuzô / Shozo, Sanshô Shinsui as Zeniya no Tadayan, Seiji Kurasaki as Kesakichi and Junko Takada as Matsuyan. The story is interesting with harsh moments with the subjects of rape, famine, mortality, birth and death, throughout it all there also cutaways to the natural world, with animals, ultimately it is about trying to evade the final journey, I may have lost track slightly, but overall it is a splendid drama. Good!