Shûji Terayama was an artist whose work was, and remains, nothing short of visionary. His third feature film, Pastoral: To Die in the Country, based on his book of poetry of the same name, is perhaps the tightest, most complete, and most satisfying of his films I have seen so far. In Pastoral, Terayama depicts the world of his childhood in a series of fantastical and surreal episodes. Growing up in a rural village, having lost his father in the war, and perpetually isolated from the world-at-large, Terayama's fictional counterpart delves into the realm of the magical and absurd. On a superficial level, it would be easy to compare Pastoral with Fellini's Amarcord, but Terayama goes further than Fellini dared to; his images are artificially constructed, yes, but they are not artificial. The world he creates is bizarre, and at times disturbing, but there is a genuine bravado and love for life that exists in it; there are moments of sorrow and trauma, but also joy and exuberance. Always of note in Terayama's films are the way he combines his images with the soundscape; sections of his films play out like dreamy music videos, albeit a decade before the music video became a fixed part of the culture. Collaborating as always with composer J.A. Seazer, music and sound plays a role that is just as important to the film as the visual elements. The soundtrack is a mixture of hard rock, dream pop, and traditional stylings, with the vocals evoking a melancholy for something out there, somewhere; the eternal cycle of life is contained within these ballads. Though much of Terayama's work is very much rooted within Japanese culture, full of symbols and rituals whose literal meanings will be lost upon foreign audiences, the spiritual meaning is ever present, there is a universality to his work, and this film especially, that burns brightly.
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