All Happy Families Are Alike - An International Film Series

The Ballad of Narayama (Japan, 1958)

In a remote mountain village bound by a strange custom – on turning seventy, residents are carried up to the top of the mountain and abandoned – a woman and her adult son spend what may be their last year together, she with courage and resignation, he with ever-mounting sorrow.

The Ballad of Narayama was written and directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, based on the first novel of author Shichirō Fukazawa. It was later remade decades later by Shohei Imamura, one of the rare instances where both a film and its remake are both considered masterpieces: Kinoshita’s film is poetic and dreamlike, based in the traditions of Japanese theater, whereas Imamura’s is austere and naturalistic.