Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2011

The story Narayama Bushiko (The Ballad of Narayama) is much loved in Japan. It’s based on the old northern Japan custom of taking elderly people to a mountaintop and leaving them to die once they’ve served their usefulness to society. First a novel by Shichiro Fukuyama in 1956, Narayama Bushiko was made into an acclaimed film in 1958 by the then-well loved director Keisuke Kinoshita. In 1983, Shohei Imamura remade the work and scooped up a Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Fest, a tremendous coup for Japanese cinema. Now Imamura’s eldest son, Daisuke Tengan, a scriptwriter, producer and director, has made this sequel. As one might imagine—it wasn’t a great idea. The story picks up with 50 elderly women who have formed a village and are fighting for survival. Some want to take revenge on the society that abandoned them (an idea well out-of-step with the original story) and others want to live out their years in peace. While the visuals of rugged mountain life and snowscapes are striking, the film descends into cliché and melodrama. Lesson: it’s better to leave legendary Japanese works of art alone.