| Zach Staads |
The Ballad of Narayama plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, May 22nd, through Sunday, May 24th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
A quick note up top, this is one of my all-time favorite movies and I highly recommend you see it if you haven’t yet. Buy your tickets now, don’t wait.1
I have oft spoken about my love of theatricality in film (see my article on Kuroneko‘s theatrical lighting style here) and there is no greater example of that kind of pure theatricality, in my eyes, than Kinoshita’s The Ballad of Narayama.2
The film opens on a Tayū, a chanting narrator clad all in black who is accompanied by a three stringed instrument known as the shamisen in a musical style known as Jōruri,3 who states the fact that they are presenting the legend of Obasute.4 This narrator sits in front of a himaku, a striped curtain used in Kabuki theaters to cover the stage before a performance. After the opening credits finish, played on top of the himaku, a faceless stagehand grabs the curtain and pulls it back to reveal a 19th-century Japanese country side as the story begins.
This already sets up several pretenses that we are watching a performance and we are getting invited into a theatrical world. The character of the narrator chants throughout the film, only stopping for the final few scenes; the characters themselves feel as though you are watching a play as personality quirks and circumstances are heightened and exaggerated, and the world itself is created through painted backdrops, miniatures, and soundstage sets. The film is almost entirely based in this quasi-reality. It mimics real-life in the quality of its sets, yet it does not shy away from the benefits of using a soundstage.
A soundstage means that the all the lighting and sets of a scene can be manipulated to the smallest degree as they are all manufactured to create specific images. In the case of Narayama, the feature is used to its fullest extent in transitions, lighting, and magical realism.
With transitions, we see scenes flow into one another as one would see them onstage. A house set breaks at the center as the lights dim on that scene, only to reveal a fully lit festival dance happening behind it. This trick in particular is used three times throughout the film in different contexts and to reveal different locations. By using such a classic theatrical transition in film, the movie utilizes the soundstage’s size and the film’s budget to greatest effect by having multiple complex sets on top of one another. There are also foreground scenery splits of nature that reveal a scene behind them as well—another classic trick—these are there is one transition that tops all the rest. I can’t properly describe it so I’m just going to let you see what happens here:
It is so COOL! Here, the film uses a Kabuki drop to transition from one scene to another and highlight the emotional moment happening just before is great on its own; but to use it to transition lighting from realistic to intensely dramatic, surreal, and unsettling is even cooler. Also, look closely at the last few frames, the drop itself disappears more seamlessly because it appears to turn into the fog behind it! (If you would like to view the gif as a few static images, click here. If you would like to see it closer to full speed, click here.)
This film does so much with lighting. If Kuroneko is my reference point for extremely theatrical black and white lighting, Narayama is my reference point for theatrical lighting in color. Lighting conveys so many complex emotions of characters, scenes, and of the places and events within the film itself. One example throughout is color drenching; scenes are drenched in one or two colors, usually red or green, and can convey tension, eeriness, or deep anguish. The most notable example in Narayama is a moment of abject horror for one of the main characters. We get to see—over the course of just a few seconds—as every light in the scene turns an intense red in a great red flood of anguish. The next minute or so plays out with this intense lighting until the character returns to the relative sanctuary of his own home. For me, there is only one lighting moment in the film that tops that.
Later on in the film, the main character’s house is drenched in a dim green light, but through the paper screens of the windows and doors emanates a sickly green light and a small red light where the home’s hearth is inside. Six people emerge from the darkness around the edges of the frame and slowly enter the house. When we cut to the inside, the home appears in two eerie perspectives that, again, I cannot fully illustrate with words so will show you in a few stills here:
[Image #3]
Alt text: Three stacked film frames of the outside and inside of an 18th century Japanese farmer’s hut that are all bathed in green with highlights of red.
Incredible. I love it. That’s all there is to it. This is such an effective use of lighting to create a sense of dread, or even a sense of “rot”—rot being a word that is used several times within the film and helps punctuate the story of death and dying that is central to the film.
Finally, there is the magical realism. This is mainly expressed through one moment in the film that is a classic storytelling mechanism, not long after the last pivotal moment in the film, it begins to snow. Not a real, harsh and heavy snow, this is the unrelenting yet gentle snow of theatre and old film that covers everything in a perfect blanket of snow. In this instance, it feels almost comforting as something deeply tragic is unfolding in the story.
While the very end of the film gives us a shift into the real world for a moment that I believe is up to personal interpretation, the last moment of artifice—the last moment in the tale that is being told to us—is two characters coming to grips with the dark fate that awaits them as the endless snow continues to bathe them, while their children sing ignorantly inside the warmth of their home, unaware of or unbothered by this same future that awaits them.
Endnotes
1 We all say we’ll buy a ticket at the door, but then half the time find out the showing is either sold out or go, “I don’t know if I’m feeling it tonight.” Just buy the ticket, it will feel good to get out and see a movie with other people! (This is how I operate, if you do not operate this way and take umbrage with this footnote, ignore it and keep reading!)
2 The 1958 version of this tale, as opposed to the 1983 version of the story by Imamura. I’ve deliberately not watched that version as of yet to not influence this article so there will be no references to it within this article.
3 In a move surprising no one who has read previous articles of mine, SURPRISE! Here’s a mini-article within this article.
The Varied Japanese Theatrical Influences that Influenced this Film, and How They Influenced Each Other
Note: I am not an expert on traditional Japanese theatre—I have a BA in Comprehensive Theatre Arts from a public university, so I may get things somewhat or totally wrong. Do your own research! While I did study Japanese theatre both in school and on my own because I find it to be one of the most interesting forms of theatre in existence and think that everyone should know more about it, most of this lives in my head only because my brain refuses to let go of any information.
Jōruri is actually both a style of music and its own genre of storytelling and is often used in Bunraku, the traditional form of Japanese puppet theatre. Bunraku became a popular form of Japanese theatre in the sixteenth century, (likely having its roots in travelling puppet shows which are one of the earliest forms of entertainment in many world civilizations and cultures) and actually came up alongside and influenced another traditional form of Japanese theatre, Kabuki.
Kabuki is the most widely known and popular style of traditional Japanese theatre, and is characterized by big theatrical makeup, performances, plot twists, and stage effects which range from simple trap doors—allowing characters to appear and disappear quickly and magically, to full on wire-flying fights that can span the entire stage. (Not to even touch a newer subsect of Kabuki known as “Super Kabuki” which is an even larger spectacle and often is used to adapt anime and video games.) Kabuki also got its start in the 16th century and over the years it began to take on elements from both Bunraku and Noh. (Noh being an older style of Japanese theatre that focuses on incredibly controlled movements by the actors on stage.)
While all four of these genres have different styles (Bunraku is puppet focused, Kabuki is actor/spectacle focused, Noh is precision focused, and Jōruri is narrative focused), all have distinct influences on Narayama. We see Bunraku and Jōruri stake their claims in the Tayū narrator and subject matter of the story, Noh in the quieter, subtler moments within the film where we can see intense control of body movements and stillness, and Kabuki in much of the larger stage magic and surreal qualities of the film.
Thank you for attending my quick, much abbreviated TED Talk on this subject. (We didn’t even dive into Yose, Rakugo, or the many other forms of Japanese theatre that all have influenced each other, the forms mentioned here, or this film and I’m not about to open that tin of fish.) Check out any and all Japanese theatre and performing arts when you get a chance, there are so many forms and styles and I guarantee that there is something that you will enjoy in its cultural oeuvre.
4 Obasute can be roughly translated as the “practice of the abandonment of old people.” A legend in Japanese storytelling.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon