Sound of the Mountain

While on the surface it does at times seem like just one more Japanese “woman’s film”, and not the most interestingly filmed one, it really does seem that the most significant events occur offscreen and are only gestured at, and that the film also contains something mysterious or uncanny that’s hard to pin down, but is most obviously hinted at by the scene in which suicide is suddenly brought up as a topic of conversation, and by the gift of the Noh mask. The presence of Setsuko Hara of course brings to mind her work for Yasujiro Ozu, but here the “eternal virgin” seems to have different depths of desire, and the film approaches dark and violent themes that are foreign to Ozu and probably stem from a strangeness to be found in Yasunari Kawabata’s novel: his work does seem to have a kind of power that manages to exert a fascination over the reader’s mind. In this case, that is obviously in part about the relationship between the female protagonist and her father-in-law, but it is also about the hidden trauma and suffering lurking beneath the surface of postwar Japan, and probably contains other secrets too.