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If you’re after real nonconformist filmmaking with a political bent, Shohei Imamura’s daring and often sexually candid pictures fit the bill. Arrow gathers three of his best from the 1980s, the international success The Ballad of Narayama, the stunning Hiroshima aftermath drama Black Rain and the largely unseen, often wickedly funny Zegen. Each is disturbing, politically pointed and relentlessly honest. Arrow appoints this three- title set with new expert audio commentaries and Tony Rayns featurettes, plus a fat essay booklet. Zegen, we are told, has never before been available subtitled in English.

Survivor Ballads: Three Films by Shohei Imamura

The Ballad of Narayama, Zegen, Black Rain

Blu-ray

Arrow Academy

1983-1989 / Color, B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 130, 125, 123 min. / Street Date December 8, 2020 / 99.95

Directed by Shohei Imamura

Films by the Japanese director Shohei Imamura have one thing in common — they’re as provocative as a slap in the face. Our introduction to...

Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1958 classic The Ballad of Narayama gets the Criterion treatment, an experimental film featuring the use of one of Japan’s signature cultural styles, Kabuki Theater, despite its cultural popularity still on the wane post-World War II. But with its exaggeration and extreme stylization, Kinoshita taps into the tragic, melancholy heart of this fable concerning abandonment of the elderly as a socially sanctioned tradition of necessity, as developed by poverty stricken ancestors.

Based on a novel by Shichiro Fukazawa, a subsequent adaptation from new wave Japanese auteur Shohei Imamura was released in 1983, a more horrific and grisly treatment of the source text. But Kinoshita’s kabuki opera, with its grand flourishes and over the top nature still manages to touch on the horrors of inhumane practices, made all the more powerful with a moving lead performance and the haunting score and narration, reminding us constantly of impending death...