Festival de Cannes Review: The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

One of the many hidden gems within 1950’s Japanese cinema is 1958’s The Ballad of Narayama, which is a masterpiece with supreme depth and emotions. To see that its 1983 remake would go on to win the Palme d’Or at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival seemingly encouraged the idea that there was another masterpiece version of the story out there. Which sadly turned out to be false. Where it is impossible to not judge the film against the 1958 original, even without the context of the previous film, 1983’s The Ballad of Narayama struggles in nearly every way.

Easily the most confusing and disappointing aspect of the film is that of how it handles its world-building. Taking place in a rural Japanese village with the custom that individuals who turn 70-years old must travel to a distant mountain to die, there is an automatic exploration of morality and death that should be near impossible for the film to mess up.

The 1983 film takes this world and throws away the seemingly obvious path of exploring these themes. Instead choosing to pay attention to annoying side characters, and focus on jokes that fail to land – such as a man attempting to have sex with a dog. These side characters and unsuccessful attempts at comedy not only distract the film thematically, but also literally causing the film to carry a bloated 130-minute runtime that is hard to sit through at points.

Despite the film carrying a substantially longer runtime than the 1958 original, it is void of any of the nuance or depth that made the original film stand out so much. Instead of being a comprehensive and fresh look at how humans view death at various stages of their lives, 1983’s The Ballad of Narayama only manages to conjure the most basic and automatically generated emotions from this plot.

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The film does near to nothing to take this story on in a deeper, much less unique, matter than the basic pitch of how the world operates. If this was the only version of the story out there, it might hold up better in this regard, but seeing the potential for the story from the 1958 film not be reached is undoubtedly disappointing.

The sole aspect of the film to truly stand out as impressive and inspired are the visuals. Even past the solid cinematography from Masao Tochizawa, the film constantly uses creative and well thought out visuals to help convoy the emotions of various scenes. It thinks outside the box when it comes to what it could focus the camera on, to capture a meaning or emotion in a way that feels like a breath of fresh air, compared to the film around these scenes.

Where the social dynamics and deeper emotions of the village are sadly underdeveloped, the physical aspects are incredibly well realized. Using smart techniques, such as at the very start of the film putting the visuals of a sunny beach and snowy village in juxtaposition to each other, helps bring this village and the environment around it to life. Whether capturing the thick snow of the winter or humidity of the summer, 1983’s The Ballad of Narayama truly transports the audience to it’s setting, which makes it all the more disappointing to see the film not go any further with what the village could be.

Outside of the film’s impressive visuals, 1983’s The Ballad of Narayama ends up ranging from average to outright terrible. Where the concept still works to the most basic degree when it comes to the film’s conclusion, there is not a single reason why this version of the film deserves attention over the original. It is a messy, distracted, and often gross film which fails to find anything of nuance or interest to say. If the concept sounds interesting, the 1958 version is clearly the superior to check out, and deserves to be seen countless times over this remake.