User Reviews

The amazing thing about Japanese movies of this period is that a film maker of Naruse's quality can be considered 'minor' in the sense of being outside the 'big three'. This wonderful movie shows why this is so unfair. Not that Ozu or Kurosawa, who were big fans of Naruse would agree. He was a masterful director, capable of beautifully composed scenes with flowing, skillful editing.

The story is straightforward - A older man and his daughter in law forge a bond as he tries in futile manner to make up for his sons neglect of his wife.

This movie is easy to dismiss as superior soap opera, but is really much more than this. Its an astonishingly rich, detailed dissection of a family under strain. Setsuko Hara is superb at playing a charming, loving wife who suppresses her deep resentment at her mistreatment by her husband. She and her father in law have a bond - but it is increasingly apparent that neither are totally innocent - there is an element of passive aggressiveness in both the lead characters that gradually leads to greater sympathy to the bad boy husband and the other superficially less sympathetic characters. One of the joys of this movie is how even the minor characters are so complex and well rendered - the sparky grandmother, the outspoken, resentful daughter, the secretary used as a go-between.

In so many ways - the production values, the acting, the thematic richness, this movie is head and shoulders over other produced anywhere in the world at this time. Naruse's movies were emotionally so much more complex and layered than almost anything made at the time. It may be a family drama made over 50 years ago but its still fascinating and entertaining and moving.

So Yamamura is the grieving observer of the failure of his children's marriages. His daughter has left her husband and brought home two children; and his son is cheating on Setsuko Hara with a mistress and a girl friend. He comes to realize that the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

Mikio Naruse is sometimes viewed as a backup to Ozu. It is true they had much the same career path, becoming directors in the late silent era, directing a wide variety of movies in the 1930s , but becoming known for women's movies in the 1950s. However, while Ozu's movies documented endurance, Naruse was more concerned with the tragedy of failure, its roots and effects. His camera work is less stylized -- or perhaps, to my eye, more western. In the face of a changing Japan, his characters do not apologize and endure; they weep and change.

What makes this movie particularly telling is that the characters at the heart of this tragedy -- the son and daughter-in-law -- are not the focus of this movie. It's Yamamura who is the movie's focus and he who learns he is the cause of the tragedy. In the end, we are offered hope for the children; they will live and perhaps be happy again; for Yamamura there is nothing but exile from life.

Because this movie has Setsuko Hara in it (an actress who was just in another Japanese movie I saw recently) I got the impression this was going to be worthwhile. For one reason or another, I didn't enjoy it as much as the other movie, maybe because Kurosawa wasn't behind this one. There's no inclusion of a World War 2 focused plot in it either, and the story we do get is in my view overemotional. Sound of the Mountain is about a woman named Kikuko (Hara) trying to navigate the difficulties involved in her marriage which is hanging by a thread due to her husband's abuse. Shuichi (Ken Uehara), Kikuko's husband, has been cheating on her with a secretary. Kikuko's father in law, Shingo (So Yamamura) is idolized by her, and he tries to become a kind of father figure to her. However, attempting to be nice in one section of his life has consequences in another. Shingo's daughter Fusako (Chieko Nakakita) thinks her father had a hand in her marriage also falling apart because he arranged it. She also takes notice of the favoritism he displays towards Kikuko over his own daughter. At a hospital some time later, Shingo is appalled to learn Kikuko has aborted her and Shuichi's future child. Realizing she's never going to be happy unless she gets away from Shuichi, Shingo has someone he knows track down Kinu; the woman Shuichi has been cheating on his wife with. Kinu tells Shingo that his son is a vile person. Kikuko decides to end her marriage to Shuichi and meets with Shingo in a park, tearfully telling him she wants to be in control of her life from now on. I typically don't like sappy movies like this, and I won't change my way of thinking just for this one film. Setsuko is not really anything like how she is in No Regrets for Our Youth. In that film, she's independent and shows her determination to overcome sizable obstacles in her life, going as far as to help the parents of her now dead boyfriend so she can gain their acceptance. Here, she cries way too much and shows little in the way of bravery. Probably the most courageous thing she does in this movie is terminate her pregnancy. For me, the main event was seeing the same guy who plays Admiral Yamamoto in Tora Tora Tora play Kikuko's father in law. Shingo is the real hero of the story since he risks his good standing with his daughter in order to help Kikuko through her problems. His confrontation with Shuichi over Kikuko's decision is probably the highlight, and he fights for Kikuko's right to have a pleasant future.

SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN / SOUNDS FROM THE MOUNTAIN (YAMA NO OTO). Viewed on Streaming. Production design = six (6) stars; subtitles = six (6) stars; music = three (3) stars; cinematography and lighting = two (2) stars; restoration/preservation = two (2) stars. Director Mikio Naruse provides a slice-of-life shomin-geki (home drama) statement on the status of post-war contemporary married life. The Director's assessment is far from optimistic. Aging parents (who have their own lingering marital difficulties) are saddled with the marriage problems of aging children who either refuse to leave home or keep moving back in. There is a son (a philander with a mistress following in his father's footsteps) and his wife (who is little more than a child-like housemaid) in residence and a daughter (with two kids, one a baby) who keeps leaving her husband and turning up. This goes on to the point where the parents decide to leave home themselves (and move back to the country) to escape this mess (most of which seems to stem from inadequate past/present parenting and being poor roll models). Thrown into the pot are the emotional impacts of abortions, a " jimusho-geki" (office drama) as a subplot--the father and son work in adjourning bank offices with "office flowers"--and the sub-rosa lechery of the father's extended parenting of his daughter in-law. Naruse's pace is plodding and often close to boring. His many nuances are hard to capture in subtitles plus the Kansai-ben dialect used for line deliveries may be a challenge for the viewer. The Director's actresses and actors turn in mostly solid (if unexceptional) performances (but one child actress steals every scene she is in!) except for his star Setsuko Hara. Hara's delivery is disappointing and ranges from embarrassingly phony child-like sugar sweet to overly stoic. Sadly her makeup and lighting are far from flattering and a major distraction. Interior and exterior sets may look familiar, since they are been used in many Toho productions. Music is mostly continuous and continuingly boring. Subtitles try their best given the circumstances (see above). Cinematography (narrow-screen format, grey and white) is nothing great. It seems unable to clearly photograph objects against bright backgrounds like the sky. Lighting continuity between shots is terrible. It looks like it was ignored on the set and during editing. Interior scenes can be as foggy as exterior ones (the latter with real fog)! Restoration/preservation is okay for audio, but inadequate for video (see above). In case you were wondering if the film's title was picked out of a hat (since it is meaningless!), the script was apparently derived from a contemporary book and the same name was used to piggyback on the popularity of the novel. Mildly entertaining melodrama. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.