Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
    --Robert Frost

    Oh, that's right, I'm supposed to be writing about watching The Ballad of Narayama (1983). I'm including the year because a first one, made in 1958, differs from the second in important ways, mentioned in the article to which the name of the movie is linked.
    I mentioned in the immediately previous post that I suspected I would be relating the movie to the secondarily previous post but I was wrong. Although the story of the movie revolves around one of the main characters, Orin, approaching the age of 70, at which time, if one lives that long, one is expected to allow oneself to be deposited on Narayama and die of exposure, the movie isn't about this. It's more a heavily symbolic piece, sometimes description, sometimes commentary, meant to compare and contrast traditional Japanese rural village existence with nature and allow the viewer to come to her own conclusions about what Shohei Imamura, the director, means to say about contemporary Japanese society circa 1983.
    I began this post with Robert Frost's poem because, through the lengthy end sequence in which Tatsuhei, Orin's eldest son and primary heir, reluctantly but dutifully carries Orin close to the top of Narayama and leaves her to die in the rocks among the skeletons of thousands ("or more", as Tatsuhei mentions earlier in the film) of other fated 70-year-olds, I found myself silently chanting Frost's poem. As Tatsuhei is descending it begins to snow, something he has made it clear he hopes will happen, as a benevolent sign from the god of Narayama. Later, at the end of the movie, the fool of the movie, Risuke, Tatsuhei's younger brother, who is always singing, mostly about his elderly mother, sings, once again, about how lucky she is, this time because it snowed as she was left on Narayama. Snow is considered to be an easy type of death by exposure.
    Although I could not help but read a few plus reviews and commentaries on the movie, I diverge with all that consider the movie cruel, even though it would seem, upon hearing the bare narrative of the movie, that its purpose is to depict and comment on the cruelty necessary to survive as humans. Not only is Orin left on Narayama, another dutiful son finds himself having to deposit his reluctant father on Narayama twice, having first delivered him tied in ropes through which the cunning father chewed. The second time, the son does not take any chances. He pushes his father off a precipice so that there's no possibility of return to the village. Tatsuhei witnesses this on his return from having gently deposited his willing mother to essentially the same fate. The movie does not overtly comment on which "go to the mountain" event is "better". Both are inevitable.
    Village justice is also highlighted when a family, the daughter of whom has been married to Tatsuhei oldest son, is convicted of stealing food and buried alive. Since the daughter/in-law is also guilty of this crime, she is lured back to her family by the scrupulously traditional Orin in order to have the same justice applied to her.
    The film artfully juxtaposes hunger, sex, birth and death among humans and animals, throughout the film. Additional seemingly simplistic but ambiguously haunting symbolism shimmers through the film: As Tatsuhei and Orin begin their journey up Narayama, Risuke, who is finally, at the age of 35, being introduced to sex by one of Orin's peers, suddenly awakens next to his consort, finds his mother's front teeth, which she earlier bashed out on a piece of stoneware in order to show that she, indeed, is not too healthy to die, declares to his bed mate that they are an amulet of rabbit's teeth and places them in his ears; After Tatsuhei returns, his wife and his new daughter-in-law are quietly shown to be wearing Orin's abandoned kimono and obi. Later, the camera lingers over a ruffle of entwined snakes; snakes in this film, according the article to which I linked the name of the film above, symbolize family and are used throughout the film to indicate fertility, family harmony and a family in trouble. While most of the family dinners have been a chicken stew, the final dinner, after Tatsuhei returns from his journey, is a stew of potatoes and eel. Check here (fourth paragraph from the bottom) if you're curious about the significance of the eel to Imamura. This review of a different Imamura film also contains the following quote which could easily apply the The Ballad of Narayama (in case you're curious to know what this reviewer thought of the film that is the feature of this post, I've connected that review to the immediately previous mention of the film's name):

Imamura is a director who despises humanity but loves individual humans. In fact, the more outrageous the individuals, the more Imamura showers them with the loving eye of his camera. Imamura seeks to expose the perverseness of human passions and social structures, such as those that led to Hiroshima or that lead daily to violent crimes on a smaller scale, but he holds out hope in the rehabilitation of individual sinners.

    Despite the ruckus of normal village life, all of which is shown in the story, watching the film was, for me a serene experience, even as I saw a dead male baby that had been exposed and poorly buried; an entire family victimized by village vigilante justice; several sick elders, one of whom is suffering so much she doesn't want to die of sickness, she'd rather go to the mountain; and, lastly Tatsuhei's physically and emotionally arduous trip up the mountain with his mother on his back. The film critic to which I linked in the immediately previous post regards the movie as a depiction of hard, rough life and pronounces the villagers cruel to elders. Incident by incident, it's obvious that life in this village isn't easy, but elder cruelty, within their system, doesn't seem to me to exist. Those who reach the age of mountain deposition are accorded respect not only for their age, but for their "sacrifice". Their trip up Narayama is surrounded in ceremony. The "cruelty" of the children toward the elders, particularly Orin, isn't cruelty, it's actually teasing, in which Orin delights and sometimes joins. Everyone in the village is aware that, if they should live so long, they, too, will be "going to the mountain". Some handle it easily. Some don't. In this village, it doesn't matter how one handles aspects of life...they unfold, anyway.
    My overall impression is that despite an attitude toward elders that natives of the U.S. would consider cruel, there are crucial differences in the way this village abandons their elders and the way we abandon ours. An ailing elder who hasn't reached the age of mountain deposition is cared for solicitously and tenderly within the family and by friends. Although we abandon our elders as surely as this village abandons theirs, ceremony and certainty, rather than guilt and angst, embrace their elders' fate. An act that seems unthinkably cruel to us is portrayed in a way that actually makes one wonder which is the crueler culture. It's hard, as well, to determine, from his direction and editing, how Imamura felt about the practice.
    My research about the film after watching it indicates that, although this method of handling old age is a popular subject of Japanese myth, there has, to date, been no evidence anywhere (the most obvious of which would be skeletal remains) to suggest that any Japanese culture, past or present, ever abandoned their elders to the elements at a certain age. If this practice never existed, I can't help but wonder what sentiment the myth satisfies; perhaps it's a sentiment that eludes my own cultural background.
    Frankly, as far as my own culture and its treatment of elders is concerned, I daresay I'm in good company when I hope that, one way or another, I manage to die before I become old. I'd even enjoy the idea of being deposited on top of a mountain in the snow to die of exposure while still hearty. Even if, approaching old age, I appear to be in fine fettle, well, one can never tell what the future holds; except, in this culture at this time, I can be fairly certain that the odds of me being abandoned to a miserable purgatory of social ostracism and poor quality of life, even if, somehow, I managed to luck into what we currently call "good facility care", are higher than the odds of me having a companion, as my mother had, like me. I didn't get the impression from this film that the villagers hated their elders, even though they refused to let them live beyond a certain age. I cannot escape the feeling that our culture hates our elders, even though we vociferously champion the possibility of most everyone living past the century mark. Thus:
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 20:36   email  this post