Written by Andreas Babiolakis

This review is a part of the Palme d’Or Project: a review of every single Palme d’Or winner at Cannes Film Festival. The Ballad of Narayama won the twenty eigth Palme d’Or at the 1983 festival.

The film was selected by the following jury.
Jury President: William Styron.
Jury: Henri Alekan, Yvonne Baby, Sergei Bondarchuk, Youssef Chahine, Souleymane Cissé, Gilbert de Goldschmidt, Mariangela Melato, Karel Reisz, Lia Van Leer.

It is difficult to make a fable in contemporary culture that possesses the same levels of deceptive simplicity and extreme depth that the tales of old carry, but Shichirō Fukazawa was able to do so with his short story The Ballade of Narayama. This was taken to the next level with Shōhei Imamura’s magnum opus film of the same name: a near-perfect adaptation that achieves exactly what it needs to. It is an emotional tale of traditional senicide: anyone over the age of seventy is to die at the top of a mountain within the privacy of their own connection with the world. We’re introduced to the sixty nine year old Orin who is initially hesitant with the inevitable being just around the corner, but she succumbs to what seemingly has to be done. The Ballad of Narayama does a great job at engrossing you within the film’s reality (albeit in a nearly fantastical feeling way, as if we are in the middle of a storybook). We can’t change the fact that ubasute exists in this film (and that it actually was practiced in real life), so we’re just here to see what transpires nonetheless.

Part of this journey is about being welcomed into the daily lives of Orin, her loved ones, and those that neighbour her existence, and you begin to get a better idea as to why she may have found solace within the morbid. Life itself is a pretty harrowing experience that we cannot escape outside of death, and at least senicide is depicted as a humbling practice that resolves one’s life with proper closure and self reflection (at least that’s the case in this film). There’s something beautiful here, even if this tradition ensures it (there aren’t any accepted exceptions). Real life carries so much depression, hardship, and turmoil, but humanity made it this way for itself. Throughout The Ballad of Narayama are moments that bring us back down to the gorgeous planet that we live on, and you can see this as a precursor of where Orin will wind up dying, but I see it as a preparedness of our ushering back into the world that once cradled us as its own beings (until we destroyed it). The art of dying alone in the wilderness and away from society would reintroduce the citizens of this Japanese village with the planet that they’ve been stripped away from for seventy years prior. It’s the least civilization can do: allow us to die within our real home, and without stipulations, sin, or agony. Just peace.

While this is what the majority of The Ballad of Narayama has me feeling (the calm before the storm seemingly being more uncomfortable than the final act), the actual climb up the mountain to expect death at the top feels like a motion picture itself. Did we actually spend enough time with Orin before she is due to depart? That’s how life itself is: it’ll never be long enough for us to feel accomplished or fulfilled. And yet we continue to scale this mountain bit by bit, and no amount of extraordinary views will cover the fact that death is coming. As much as I loved the first acts of The Ballad of Narayama, this moment that we were prepared for is what sticks in my mind the most. I almost felt like I was there with Orin and her son, who carried her to her figurative casket on the mountaintop. I couldn’t do anything to stop them, but I don’t think I should have anyway. We take so much pride in being alive that we’re never prepared for what we’ve been alerted of since as far back as we can remember: that this will all end eventually. It does for everyone and everything.

Orin’s actual facing of the elements is how The Ballad of Narayama finishes, and we’re also prepared for this moment for the whole film’s runtime. It still isn’t enough. I still fought back tears the first time I watched the film, and I will likely have to have this same fight with my swelling, watering eyes every time I reach this point. I was originally alongside Orin during this trek. I now feel like her in these closing moments, and you will, too. Your own age doesn’t matter. It’s impossible not to feel like it’s us all alone in the frigid conditions of the world, as we are freezing beyond repair, and awaiting for the pain to all be over. That’s when we take ourselves out of this place, and we plant ourselves back next to Orin. Now she has company. We do, too. We’re in this together. It doesn’t seem like it, but The Ballad of Narayama allows the lonely to have us for comfort during their final moments. There’s something warm in that, although it doesn’t feel like it initially.

Shōhei Imamura would go on to win another Palme d’Or for the electrifying The Eel, but that’s an award you can chalk up to how much that motion picture stood out in the moment. His first win for The Ballad of Narayama feels like the accolading of an unforgettable film that needed to be recognized as early as possible. Once you see The Ballad of Narayama, you never forget it. You may not hear about it much outside of those who personally love the film, and watching it for yourself will likely place you in the same boat: you won’t be able to stop discussing it. It reminds me a lot of 2021’s Drive My Car in a loose way: particularly the shared experience of facing our own deaths through a beautiful, moving, cathartic lens (both being Japanese films adapted from short stories with extreme precision of pacing also helps). The notion that we should be at peace with our mortality will never die (so to speak).

We go to watch films to escape, sure, but if we are to stare at pictures that evoke our consciousness of our own certain abilities to one day die, at least it’s with something that is there to console us, be empathetic with this weird path that we all face, and remind us that we aren’t alone, and we are all worthy of commiseration before we are gone. At the same time, The Ballad of Narayama will have you entwined within life itself, whether it’s how humanity has framed its own existence, or the vegetation, animals, and other forms that surround us as we surrender. The Ballad of Narayama is a must-see piece of filmic folklore, because you’ll leave the film feeling like a completely different person: one that is cognizant of their mortality, and appreciative of what we still have yet to accomplish or appreciate.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.