Requiem for the Ones Experiencing the Tragedy of Farewells: The Ballad of Narayama

Abstract

The movie 'The Ballad of Narayama' is considered as one of the masterpieces of traditional cinema and of the famous director Shohei Imamura. The movie depicts a very cruel tradition to which people striving to survive in a mountain village of Japan are strictly attached. Tradition, as a founding past, is carried in the movie to the present and the future, with rituals, ceremonies and rites. Thus the community achieves a knowledge through tradition, allowing it to reproduce itself each time.