The Ballad of Narayama

The Ballad of Narayama is set in a poor mountain village in nineteenth-century Japan, where food is scarce and survival depends on harsh custom. When villagers reach the age of seventy, tradition requires them to be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die, so that the young may eat. Orin is sixty-nine and accepts this fate, but before she goes she wants her widowed eldest son Tatsuhei to find a wife. The film follows the family through the rhythms of village life, the grinding hunger of winter, and Orin's preparations for her final journey, which she insists on undertaking even though her son is reluctant to carry her. Shōhei Imamura directed and wrote the screenplay, working from the same source material as Keisuke Kinoshita's 1958 film of the same name. It sits between Vengeance Is Mine and Black Rain among the seven features he directed between 1964 and 2002. Ken Ogata plays Tatsuhei and Sumiko Sakamoto plays Orin, with Tonpei Hidari, Aki Takejo, Shoichi Ozawa and Fujio Tokita among the credited cast of twenty-three. The film runs 130 minutes and was produced by Toei Company. On IMDb it holds 7.8 out of 10 from around 9,900 votes, while on TMDB it rates 7.5 from 212 votes; a critics' score of 8.7 from 15 reviews places it above both audience figures.