Top Cast
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Kazuhiro Muroyama
Hayao
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Meiko Kaji
Kumiko
Overview
In Japan, the passing of a loved one is marked by 'night watch': staying up all night with the deceased, incense burning throughout, to ensure their safe passage to the afterlife.
Rating
Recommendations
In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.
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In a remote village where food is scarce, elders who reach the age of 70 are carried by their children to the top of a nearby mountain to die in solitude. Orin, a vibrant 69-year-old grandmother, has accepted her fate — but struggles to prepare the rest of her family for the ritual.
The Ballad of Narayama
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Two characters on a Noh stage dramatize the rite of love and death of Lieutenant Shinji Takeyama and his wife Reiko.
Patriotism
American retired Judge Randall Nemes and his hired gun, Gaspar, track down a con man posing as a priest in a small Colombian town only to be thrown off-course by a scrappy 16-year-old girl intent on reuniting with her sister in the United States.