The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

A heart-breaking film by Shohei Imamura.

Why is it that the other Japanese show I watched was also set in a really poor village, where they lived such bitter, hard lives?

Driven by poverty, the villages live out John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. They make laws so that the village as a community will survive: thieves are buried alive, those who are 70 years old are carried up the mountain to die. It's sad. Heart-wrenchingly so. Is this what we become when you take away our food, lodging, warmth, lodging? Are all our ethics and principles just sentimental fluff, suitable only for the well-fed?

The show intersperses cuts of animals mating with each other or devouring each other, almost like a periodic reminder that only the fittest survive — that life is nasty, brutish, short.

Watching grandma made me tear. She is too stoic, too selfless, too much like my own grandma.