The Ballad of Narayama

With beautiful photography and sensitive, elegant acting, this is perhaps the best exploration of what it means to be human. As usual, Shohei Imamura draws direct parallels between the basic drives & instincts (hunger, greed, lust, anger, envy) of people and other animals. I have friends who have walked out of this movie because they found these comparisons so depressing when shown in the desperately poor rural Japan during the late 19th century. What they missed was the core intelligence, caring, self sacrifice, clear thinking and love that enabled that community, and by extension the human race, to survive such difficult times.

This sympathetic portrayal of a family in a rural village is the best of ten films I have seen from Imamura, with an epic scale of Akira Kurosawa and all of the subtlety of Ozu.