In a small mountain village, Kinuyo Tanaka is doing her duty. She has gotten a new bride for her widowed son, Teiji Takahashi and made her new daughter welcome, showing her the secret spot where she fishes for trout. She has broken her teeth. When she turns 70 and the New Year comes, she will have her son carry her to the mountain Narayama and leave her there. Everyone is happy about this, except her son and her daughter-in-law whom she has treated so kindly, but that's the way of this poor, hungry, ritual-bound place.
A great movie shows you something new, and Keisuke Kinoshita showed me many things I had never seen before, and showed me many images from other Japanese movies in a new light. All the writing on this movie refers to it as "kabuki influenced", and I know almost nothing of that save a few scenes and glimpses in other movies. I am uncertain of what it means, but it affected me greatly. What more can one ask of any work of art?
One .... well, let's call it technique that Kinoshita uses was to shoot everything on sets, clearly marked as sets, with beautifully painted backdrops. It placed me in an artificial world, one of symbolic fiction, where the artist can examine those things which are too distressful to look at directly: thus the sexuality in DRACULA, in an era when sex could not be discussed, or the question of what makes a human in FRANKENSTEIN, or how to restore order in the universe in a well-made murder mystery, or the dangers of the world in a fairy tale.
Perhaps this limited, stage-like setting is essential to kabuki. If so, it might explain something in a few Japanese movies I have seen, most notably in Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW. In that movie, all the action in the first half takes place on a single set, bound almost like a proscenium arch, while the second half takes place all around Tokyo. Is the first act all a matter of story and the second, out in the real world? Can art and fantasy affect reality?
I don't know. This movie is too raw in mind and heart to sit here, plucking out bits and pieces of technique like the academic analyst I have been all my adult life. Sometimes when a movie show you something new, it's meaningless nonsense. That's when I can analyze it. Sometimes, it overwhelms you and leaves you wondering, and that's when it's great.
A great movie shows you something new, and Keisuke Kinoshita showed me many things I had never seen before, and showed me many images from other Japanese movies in a new light. All the writing on this movie refers to it as "kabuki influenced", and I know almost nothing of that save a few scenes and glimpses in other movies. I am uncertain of what it means, but it affected me greatly. What more can one ask of any work of art?
One .... well, let's call it technique that Kinoshita uses was to shoot everything on sets, clearly marked as sets, with beautifully painted backdrops. It placed me in an artificial world, one of symbolic fiction, where the artist can examine those things which are too distressful to look at directly: thus the sexuality in DRACULA, in an era when sex could not be discussed, or the question of what makes a human in FRANKENSTEIN, or how to restore order in the universe in a well-made murder mystery, or the dangers of the world in a fairy tale.
Perhaps this limited, stage-like setting is essential to kabuki. If so, it might explain something in a few Japanese movies I have seen, most notably in Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW. In that movie, all the action in the first half takes place on a single set, bound almost like a proscenium arch, while the second half takes place all around Tokyo. Is the first act all a matter of story and the second, out in the real world? Can art and fantasy affect reality?
I don't know. This movie is too raw in mind and heart to sit here, plucking out bits and pieces of technique like the academic analyst I have been all my adult life. Sometimes when a movie show you something new, it's meaningless nonsense. That's when I can analyze it. Sometimes, it overwhelms you and leaves you wondering, and that's when it's great.