A surprising box-office hit in Japan, Sumiko Haneda's documentary epic could be the nonfiction flip side of a Shohei Imamura film, reveling in the patterns and rough-hewn strands of a Japan caught between tradition and modernity. Shot in the foothills of Iwate Prefecture's mystical Mt. Hayachine, the film records a year in the life of the area's villages and villagers as they prepare for kagura performances, a dance-theater form with origins in religious rituals (and now mainly performed for eager tourists). The film can be enjoyed and processed on many levels: a musicologist's fascinating glimpse into kagura traditions and performances; an ethnographic portrait of rural life and village hierarchies; and most of all, a study of a key moment in Japanese society, when, even as Haneda filmed, rural lifestyles were exposed to modernity: paved roads, cars, and television sets. Fittingly, the film's true beauty comes not through its thesis, but in its attunement to the mountain's own intricate rhythms.