9. The Ballad of Narayama (1958)
This is probably the darkest film on the list with the most uncomfortable subject matter. From director Keisuke Kinoshita, The Ballad of Narayama tells the story of a small Japanese village that honors an ancient tradition: upon reaching a certain age the village elderly must ascend Mt. Narayama and sit atop its peak until death takes them. The reasoning behind such barbarity is that the old and infirm are no longer considered valuable members of society Thus, they alleviate woes, financially and socially, from their offspring, by removing themselves from life. The entire film was shot in vivid color on theatrical backdrops (a send up to Kinoshita's days in the theatre) and thereby makes the subject matter all the harder to ingest. That it's so bright, colorful and lively looking lends a dark and critical irony to the overall story. The film could be remade today (it already was in the '80s) with just as much poignancy. Indeed, we are so quick to remove our grandparents and their peers from society by hiding them away in nursing homes that essentially serve as waiting lines of death, the occupants slowly and unassumingly waiting for their numbers to be called. An argument could be made that Kinoshita was focusing solely on the time he made the film (1958, a period when many young people were looking to develop a greater sense of independence from their parents) but that argument is quashed by the film's final scene: a train in (then) modern day Japan leaves a station that sits by Mt. Narayama. That the scene is the only one in black and white suggests Kinoshita believed things were worse off for the elderly than they were two centuries prior.