Welcome gentle readers to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today it’s a beautiful but sad one from Japan: Ballad of Orin:
Next weeks film:
Reviews of “The Ballad of Orin’:
RogerEbert.com says:
Shinoda and the master Japanese cameraman Kazuo Miyagawa tell this story in stunning visual terms: There’s an ironic contrast between the supreme beauty of many of their images and the blindness of their heroine. There are countless moments of beauty: A cart being pulled across a bridge against a backdrop of blue sky, the wind sweeping an empty field, a terrifying drop from a cliff, tiny birds being fed by a parent, and countless other images from nature.
Fiction Machine says:
Released in 1977, Ballad of Orin is one of a string of dour, miserable dramas directed by the late Shinoda Masahiro, who died earlier this year at the age of 94. Shinoda is a key filmmaker of Japanese cinema’s ‘new wave’, alongside Oshima Nagisa. While Oshima gained a great deal of international exposure through foreign co-productions like In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion, and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, Shinoda never achieved such fame outside of Japan. That is reflected by the broad unavailability of many of his key works internationally.
His work is well worth tracking down. They often sit in contrast with the stylised nature of Japanese films that ran through the 1950s and 1960s, and replaced that aesthetic with a much darker, and particularly more cynical depiction of both contemporary and historical drama. I have been on a journey of Shinoda’s work for a couple of years now, as I manage to track down each of his films. He has expressed historical with a powerful political verve in Assassination (1964), reframed film noir with a black and dour touch in The Petrified Forest (1973), and then handled supernatural horror with a brutal impact and gendered focus in Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975).
Letterboxd says:
A tragic tale about loneliness, imposed by social mores and expectations.
Given everything that Orin goes through, including being ostracized and losing people she loves one by one, her fate is almost expected, despite hoping otherwise.
Not to mention there is commentary on Japan’s war in Siberia, which is not known in the West, and how the poor are forced to fight and die for the rich.
My take:
A beautiful and terribly, I mean terribly, sad film. The cinematography is gorgeous as noted above. There are lots of subtexts about the Westernization of Japan, from the clothing to the trains to the use of Western engineering techniques. This is juxtaposed with the dying days of Old Japan with its traveling minstrels, abandoned shrines, and religious festivals. Well worth watching and watching again: ⭐⭐.
Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Writers: Keiji Hasebe, Masahiro Shinoda
Plot (Spoilers!):
Young Orin was born blind, a terrible disability at the best of times. She doesn’t live in the best of times. She lives in early 20th century rural Japan.
Her mother struggles to care for her and decides to leave her with a household of goze. Goze are blind female minstrels who wander the back roads, singing and playing instruments in small towns and isolated homes. It’s a rough life, filled with dangers.
Things are about to get worse for Orin. She loves a man, which is forbidden in the world of the goze. She is expelled from the home and must now wander alone, prostituting herself along with performing.
Her luck changes for the better in time. She meets a man, Heitarō, a strapping itinerant carpenter who protects and respects her. They travel together and times are good, or at least better.
But it wasn’t meant to last. Heitarō is a wanted man. They must part way for a while and when they are reunited, it’s not for long. Heitarō murders a man who raped Orin. He is also a deserter from the army which is fighting in Siberia. He is captured by the authorities, tortured, and doomed to execution.
Orin is left alone again. In despair, she heads for a sea cliff and flings herself off of it. Her bones are seen laying at the foot of the cliff as the movie ends.
***********Bonus: Jazz!***********
This is Cannonball Adderly’s 74 Miles Away. It is my favorite jazz piece of all time. It’s one of my most favorite pieces of music of all time. It’s primal. It’s daimonic. If you listen to one jazz song in your life, make it this one:
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Wow! Great Jazz on a Sunday Morning!!!!!!!!!
Cannonball is amazing. That was a Premium Jazz display by a Premier Jazz group. As a Jazz player I very much appreciate this inclusion. I love the ‘chordal dissonance’ of the piano ‘fronting’ the rhythm section in the beginning and then transitioning to a more chordal consonance at the ~4:30 mark.
Cannonball displays the quintessential skill of ‘speaking’ (playing) Jazz rhythms in full sentences (not just riffs/phrases). I could hear elements of “So What!” (Miles’–‘Kind of Blue’ album) in this Jazz piece.
What a start to this Sunday morning. Thanks!!!
I’m so glad you liked it! I find that piece to be utterly entrancing, it gets my heart pumping every time I hear it.
Just my opinion, but the piece feels ‘entrancing’ because of the ‘chordal dissonance’ of the piano in the beginning. The piano chords being played are using dissonant “4th’s” and “7th’s” of the tonal scale, instead of the more settled tones of a 1-3-5-7th chord. This is similar to the technique used by J. Coltrane on “A Love Supreme”. (Another mesmerizing Jazz journey.)
Cannonball is matching this ‘dissonance’ with his creative Sax ‘riff’ sentences (melody). Notice that the music has a ‘classical’ change of movement at about the 4:30 mark. The rhythm slows the other instruments recede. As the piano comes ‘forward’ again it is with more consonance in the chord tones (calming). Cannonoball matches that with his jazz riffing (melody).
Then individual group members take turns emulating CB’s musical ‘riffs’ (typical Jazz protocol). Eventually they all get back to ‘pushing’ the sound forward in the ‘dissonance’ (mesmerizing) heard in the beginning. The piece is time-travel to another world through Jazz!
Thank you for your informed perspective! I have more of a phantasmagorical experience when I hear it. The horns sound like ancient gods conversing. The piano sounds like the incantations of a sorcerer.
I don’t know much about Jazz but I know what I like! and that is top quality music, jazz or otherwise. Head, heart and hip music, all at once. Thanks.
My pleasure!
Thank you. This is what joy sounds like.
A related thought about the title: “74 Miles Away”.
My comment above discuss the tonal “dissonance” created by using 4th’s and 7th’s in the piano chords. Could that be what the “74” alludes to? And, of course, Cannonball played in Miles Davis band in the late ’50’s. For those of you unfamiliar with Jazz: listen to Miles’ “Kind of Blue” album (1959) and see if you don’t like it.
It’s in 7/4 time! Often played as 1 bar of 4/4 and one bar of 3/4, but these guys get the whole thing together. The rhythmic movement is different from what we are used to in popular music (mostly 4/4).
It’s a Zawinul tune, so expect the unusual and enjoy the younger Zawinul as he spreads his wings here as a composer. I may be wrong, but I don’t think Zawinul ever played regular gigs with Miles, though Cannonball Adderley certainly did. He was a part of the MIles Davis Quintet at one point, before this song was written and recorded, IIRC.
So, “So What” in 7/4 time, but removed enough from Miles to be “far away”? Interesting to speculate.
Thanks for your insight.
I enjoyed the movie
Thanks for sharing the movie. It was enthralling, beautiful, brutal and essential.
I thought Ballad of Orin was good. Thanks for the link.
This was recorded around the same time John Coltrane died (July 1967). I think of this as Adderley’s tribute to the man and his music.