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Imamura
The Austin Film Society screened Imamura's
The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama-Bushiko
- 1983) at the Alamo
Drafthouse in Austin, Texas (Tuesday, December 21, 1999, 7:00pm). Here are
some impressions. (Others are also welcome to submit theirs. See
page bottom for details and
 information).
nan(d:o) had this to say:
There's something about the movie-going experience. Film is an experience: the environment in which we see/watch/hear/listen to a film contributes as much to the experience as the film itself, and so does the audience and anything else that may come before or after the film. There should be something against film introductions. A "good" film introduction, if there's such a thing, should tell us something about the making of the film and the film-maker behind it. It should tell us the year the film was made and the significance, if any, of the time and place when and where it was shot. It should not tell us anything about the story we are about to see, it should not give away any details, and above all, it should not, in any way, tell us whether we should like it or not. I have been accused of many things for writing these impressions, including "anal-retentive academic grandstanding" and being "all wet". Salvatore Botti's video-taped introduction to this film, projected larger-than-life on the very screen the film was about to be shown, certainly qualifies as grandstanding of some sort, too. That kind of introduction diludes the impact of the film and should be avoided. I'd make a motion for AFTERwords (Q&A's and the like) instead of FOREwords (introductions) to this kind of films in the future. Anyone cares to second it?
Salvatore, who gave the intro's to most of these films, believes that one of the main features of Imamura's films is his vivid portrayal of our "primal nature". He may be right, for all I know, but if he is, these films are nothing much. For these reasons: to be born, to grow, to reproduce and to die and serve as food for other living things to repeat the cycle, is the way of all flesh, the way of all living things. Do we really need a filmmaker to tell us that? Do we really need a filmmaker to remind us of our "primal nature". If we do, the educational system has failed miserably, and we really need to start watching more PBS nature specials. Perhaps an overritualistic, overcivilized society needs to be reminded of its origins once in awhile or perhaps they were not making that many nature specials in the 60's, 70's and early 80's when Imamura made most of these films. If that's the only purpose behind these films, then the PBS series Nature does a better job than any of Imamura's films any day (They had a special called The Nature of Sex that ran the gamut of the living experience from insect to human. Zoologist Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, also did a TV special called Sex and the Human Animal).
I think that it is not any portrayal of our "primal nature", or the fact that "copulation is everywhere", as Salvatore said, what adds significance to this film. I think it is the tension, the dichotomy between the primal and the rational (or what I call the "rationally irrational" culture of humans, specially religion) what adds significance to this film: a dying husband asks his wife to sleep with every man in the village after he dies to appease a god. She obeys. What is this? The "primal" or the "rational" gone a bit haywire? Most cultures practice one or more versions of monogamy. A husband telling his wife to sleep around for religious reasons seems rather overrationally irrational. When she starts doing it after he dies, an old man whose turn to sleep with her has come, prays to her sex organs. She tells him "Stop praying to that! Get on top of me and slide it in!" Has anyone ever witnessed an animal or insect praying to the opposite sex's thing before mating? Humans about to do the "primal thing" overindulging in overly cultural/rational religious behavior? If that's not peculiar, I don't know what is. Only humans seem to engage in such outlandish culture-shaped (e.i., religious) irrationally overrational behavior.
No one in the history of thought or religion has come up with a satisfactory explanation for human nature: this dichotomy of the primal vs. the cultural/rational interfacing in one being. That's what leaves room for artists and writers and filmmakers to take a crack at this question. Philosopher Will Durant liked referring to Shakespeare as the "greatest of psychologists". By adding drama or comedy to his deep psychological studies, Shakespeare created universally acclaimed literature. Imamura is basically a sociologist, an anthropologist. It is by adding drama and/or dark comedy to these sociological and anthropological studies of his that he makes them potential literature, visual literature, and therefore, potential art.
We are all headed for Narayama to face "the god of the mountain" sooner or later. Whether this practice of carrying one's 70-year-old parents and dropping them off to die on top of a mountain is a way of accepting the inevitable with dignity or a barbaric religious practice in Western eyes (nursing homes seem just as cruel sometimes) or simply population control, is the question that adds drama to this film. Whether this practice of mating with animals is a way of highlighting the primal nature of human beings or a barbaric disgusting practice in most cultures' eyes, is the question that adds dark comedy to this film. It is by adding this
drama and this comedy to an otherwise cold observation of human nature that Imamura succeeds here in raising this film to a higher level.
This is a beautiful film. Of all of Imamura's films (that
I have seen so far), this is the one in which the sociological-anthropological
study approach, the drama, the dark comedy, and the technique (gorgeous
cinematography by Masao Tochizawa) all come together
as one. It is hard to make more than one, and perhaps only the likes of Michelangelo, Leonardo or Van Gogh could, but Imamura has at least one capolavoro (e.i., masterpiece) in the art of filmmaking.
nan(d:o)
Steev had this to say:
Since this was the second time I've seen "Ballad of Narayama", my memories of
the first viewing are still strong. More than anything else, the last
scenes, where Ken Ogato most literally carries his mother to her final
resting place, stuck with me. And what performances by the two leads as they
subtly battled each other and themselves before coming to a final resignation
to death, and life! I remembered the poignancy of the mother's determination
to relinquish her life and her son's desire to preserve it. I remembered her
final dismissal of him when he returned to tell her of the snow. But new
meaning unfolded with this repeat viewing. It was one of those things where
you're not quite sure how much of it was memory and how much was seeing
through a different filter called change.
Now the enormity of the son's responsibility and reluctance to let go seemed
heavier. Her weight upon his back as he climbed, her "disappearance" when he
let her down to drink and her continual and insistent pats on his shoulder
spoke of an intimacy and subtlty rarely achieved in cinema, even by a master
such as Imamura. With her final wave of the hand, the mother cut her
remaining line to life, that of family and blood ties that she had lived at
times selflessly for, and the world of the living, surrendering to the
culmination of her process of dying.
As I have been erroneously partnered with AFS's introductions in a vain
attempt to classify our observations of the "primal nature" of Imamura's
films together, it is hilarious that Nando would subscribe a completely
materialist reading to my analysis of a filmmaker who is anything but that!
I couldn't even begin to guess what Nando's, or Salvatore's view of "primal
nature" is. Nor would I want to. The indications of what this means to
Nando: PBS nature specials, or Salvatore: "copulation is everywhere", are
downright scary and have about as much to do with Imamura as a Pokemon doll.
Yes, we do need a filmmaker to remind us of our "primal nature" if our
notion of it is television specials and copulation. He's not elucidating the
"reasons" Nando stated, "to be born, to grow, to reproduce and to die and
serve as food for other living things to repeat the cycle", but rather HOW.
Imamura, with every frame, reminds us that there is so much more to life, and
death, than what we get from our five senses. And that is so much more than
a Nature, a Nature of Sex or a Sex and the Human Animal wherein all things,
including this remarkably complex being called a human, which we haven't even
figured out how his/her brain operates or what a mind or soul is, is reduced
to a simple machine consisting of so many mechanical parts and explainable
mechanism wherein sex and copulation are a species survival instinct or a
recreational impulse.
Like film, life "is an experience wherein the environment in which what we
see/watch/hear/listen contributes as much to the experience as life itself".
But what about those things besides what our senses tell us? This more
sublime domain is the one Imamura inhabits, the one that sets him apart from
the TV shows and sex games. What is our primal nature? Does it change and
grow as we change? Is it individuated? The mother seemed to have a
completely different reality than her sons and the other villagers. Yet it
was no less primal, no less natural. What makes our primal reality, as
humans, different from that of animals? Perhaps an old man praying to a
young woman's vagina? It is these intangible, unexplainable elements,
things outside of science, outside of psychology, that Imamura attempts to
depict more vividly with each film. Unlike Shakespeare, where behavior is
always explained by psychological motivation, Imamura tries to paint the soul
without lines and boundaries and without reference to another human field of
discipline or study, be it sociology, anthropology, pyschology, Freudian,
Jungian or otherwise. Perhaps he was really attempting to make us see, truly
see, and therefore feel, the process of letting go when it is our time to
die. It is not the dichotomy but the connectedness that is his preoccupation
in "Ballad..." This is his paen to death, rapidly approaching for him. The
viewer can almost hear the questioning, along with the mother, of it's
nature. And feel the final surrender.
Where Imamura's later films are different is that, in them, he stripped away
all cultural trappings in his depiction of native island peoples, so called
primitives, to show how primal nature itself can evolve to the point, as with
the old woman, where ones goes beyond family, tradition, desires, love, law
and, especially, ego to accept their own passing and even use it to further
this chain of primal nature that is the very essence of human evolution.
Since this is the final film of the series, I want to thank the AFS and the Alamo for
providing this wonderful opportunity to rediscover and appreciate a true
master of the cinema. And to thank Nando for providing this forum. Would
that more appreciative and inquisitive minds used it.
Steev
nan(d:o) had this to say:
On Steev's 3rd paragraph above: hahahahahahahahaha...missed the whole point... what's new?
hmmmmmmmm... Imamura and Pokemon! Now there's a title for an essay! What am I saying? For a
thesis! Shouldn't
give me such ideas, Steev, really...hahahahahahahaha...
On Steev's last paragraph above: Would indeed! And you're most very welcome...
nan(d:o)
[Note: I have met a lot of Japanese people since I first saw and wrote
about this film back in 1999. Not a single one of them had seen this film and
maybe one had heard about it and knew who Imamura was. It's a shame, a shame
indeed, that Imaura
is better known abroad than in his own culture - Nov 14, 2007]
Thanks to the Austin Film Society and the Alamo Drafthouse for the screenings!
More comments anyone?
nan(d:o)
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