Macabre and sexualized, Grass Labyrinthplunges into the subconscious of Akira, a teenager haunted by the desire to remember the lyrics of a song his absent mother once sung. Akira’s mother is framed yet inaccessible—withdrawing into water, paper screens, a tune that has lost its lyrics, and the mists and shadows of memory. The mother spins and works a loom, and binds her son with rope. Later, Akira is otherwise entangled with a nymphomaniac and a prostitute. Abandoned by his own mother, Terayama imbues the film with the phantasmagoria of his childhood, including the ghost tales of Aomori—recalled by a chorus in whiteface—and the experience of growing up in a house adjoining a cinema. His expressionistic projections are further amplified by composer J. A. Seazer’s portentous birdsong, wind chimes and operatic crescendos. Once writing that all dead people become words, Terayama wrestles with language and loss through this labyrinthine search for lyrics and the lost mother they represent.