Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) on Netflix
An adult director is making a film about his adolescence in a rural Japanese village, but his younger self resists the memories he is reshaping.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.7/102,931 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
At the foot of Mount Osore in Aomori Prefecture, a fifteen-year-old boy shares a house with his widowed mother. He is drawn to the married woman next door, and he watches an unmarried woman give birth to a child the village rejects. After quarreling with his mother, he goes to his father's grave on the mountain and through a local oracle says he plans to leave home in the spring. A traveling circus reaches the village, and he longs for the wristwatch of a woman in an inflatable costume. His mother will not buy him one. When the married neighbor says she is unhappy and wants to escape to Tokyo by train, he agrees to help and slips out at night while his mother sleeps.
Cast
- Hiroyuki Takanoas Young Shuji
- Masahiro Saitoas Longsocks
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Shūji Terayama, who wrote and directed Pastoral, intended to play the adult director in his own film himself, but he abandoned the idea after opposition from his staff.
- Pastoral was the last film ever screened at the Art Theatre Shinjuku Bunka, part of the Art Theatre Guild's shrinking art house circuit, before the venue closed at the end of 1974.
- Independent filmmaker Yoshihiko Matsui, whose 1979 debut Rusty Empty Can first brought him to Terayama's attention, said Pastoral was the film that inspired him to pursue directing.
