Poem

In a decaying aristocratic household, a young servant bound tightly to the rules goes about his work. While the family drifts towards modernity, pleasure and financial collapse, he holds on to tradition and ritual. As they argue over the fate of the estate his own spiritual order is shaken, because his teacher proposes selling this quiet mountain property to greedy speculators. Akio Jissoji’s film is the last of the works he made with the writer Toshiro Ishido that are known as the Buddhist trilogy, after This Transient Life and Mandara. All three take up aspects of Buddhist thought obliquely. Produced by ATG, it counts among the most formalist and most demanding works of the Japanese new wave. Camera movement and framing matter far more here than the narrative does.