Masterpiece
Ikiru (To Live), by Akira Kurosawa, is sort of a `lost' film. No, it was never really lost, but it is unlike the archetypal Kurosawa film Western audiences think of him making, and thereby lost in his canon. It is not some historical epic filled with honor, samurais, and swordplay. It is more in line with the genre of retrospective life films in the vein of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane or Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries, in that we drop in the on the life of an ordinary man- in this case lifelong low level Tokyo city bureaucrat office head Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a few months before his death by stomach cancer, and witness how this `living mummy', as his co-workers chide him (one of the nicer things they say about him), reclaims meaning in a life long since blanched of it. Unlike Charles Foster Kane, a business magnate, or Isak Borg, a renowned Academic, Watanabe is the sort of man most people would ignore.
His devotion to his work life only accentuates his forgetability, for he seems somehow pleased with himself and his existence (or maybe just narcotized), merely rubber stamping projects here and there, or assisting his underlings in giving grieving citizens the bureaucratic runaround. Yet, as soon as we, and he, get confirmation of his cancer (although his doctors, in Japanese tradition deny it, and Kurosawa deftly skewers this absurd tradition in a hilarious scene where another stomach patient- played by Atsushi Watanabe- tells Watanabe exactly what horrors to expect from the doctors and the disease, and is right) something within Watanabe shifts. A mere month shy of setting the all time record for perfect attendance, he skips out of work for a few days. The non-news of his impending demise has shattered all his desires for conformity.... This is a great film, and Shimura (a veteran of the Godzilla films I loved in my youth, as well a Kurosawa regular film player) gives a great performance. The way he imposes his will on the gangsters, bureaucrats, and politicians to get the park built shows smart subversion at its best, and possibly enough to make up for the years of living death between his wife's death and his graves-edge rebirth. Like Rashomon, which preceded it in the Kurosawa canon, Ikiru deals with perspective, but not the perspective of many on one event, but the perspective of many on many things: life, a man, a park, accomplishment. It is, in that way, something like Rashomon 2. It is one of the many reasons this is such a great film. Another is that while the first two thirds of the film, while Watanabe lives, is great, there have been Hollywood films that come close to it- in construction and true sentiment. But, no Hollywood film has ever done what the last third of this film does, craft a stage play that can basically stand alone as an existential debate on life and art, purposiveness and meaning. This daring and depth is what soars Ikiru past lesser films. Even Citizen Kane, as great and influential a film as that is, was not as daring narratively, as this film, for the themes of the film, while profound, are not really original. It's all how the film presents these issues, starting with the film's first shot of an X-Ray of Watanabe's stomach cancer. Despite all that is to occur, Kurosawa never lets us forget that all of what occurs is due to a few cells in a man's stomach that forgot how to behave. Without the cancer, Watanabe remains a mummy for years more, and the slum children have no park to relieve, however briefly, their misery.
Yet, even more profound than the philosophy of the film, is its realism. By the end of the film, we see that Watanabe's co-workers truly are bureaucratic scum. They talk the talk at his wake, but refuse to walk Watanabe's walk. Watanabe's victory is small, and temporal. Likely, the gangsters will find another way to corrupt that area, and with Watanabe gone there is no one left in his office who will care. Kurosawa has shown us victory, but acknowledges it may be Pyrrhic, at best. It is also the greatest artistic indictment of bureaucracies ever made, and not just of Post-War Japan's problems, nor even Japan's for the three tenets of Japanese bureaucracy- be punctual, never take off, and do nothing, are universal, even if only codified in Japan. We see this most eloquently in the scenes of Watanabe skipping work, for the office work comes to a halt and the mountain of paperwork continues to bloat.
Some believe that the famed Tolstoy story, The Death Of Ivan Ilyich, is the basis for this film, since both involve petty bureaucrats who die, but Ikiru is the far greater work of art, for it about life, not merely its waste. Ilyich cannot cope with life, while Watanabe, however, acts upon his demise's coming, but why he does, is a bit of a mystery. We can only assume his motives, for Kurosawa keeps much of his motivation a secret, as Watanabe spends quite some time `offstage', even when alive. Perhaps the only flaw in the film is in the subtitling, with white subtitles almost blanched out in some of the shots, but that's not anything Kurosawa had control over. That which he did shows mastery, something he never seems to have lost.

Extraordinary allegory - realization of death gives new meaning to life
Watanabe-san, a government bureaucratic drone with a monochromatic life, learns that he has stomach cancer and just a few months to live. This realization galvanizes him into making some large changes in his life, pursuing new relationships and noticing the beauty in everyday occurrences, like sunsets.

Most importantly, he takes up the one-man mission of championing the renovation of a local cesspool field into a children's park.

Only when he learned he was going to die did he truly start to live.

In the end, we are all terminal. This Kurosawa movie is an extraordinary allegory on how man can find meaning in his life by engagement with others, by helping others and joining in positive causes beyond their own immediate concerns.

Sadly, I suspect many Western audiences will be turned off by the length of the movie, its pacing, subtitles and black-and-white texture. That is a shame since "Ikiru" is a gem!

Will Anyone Know You Lived
Ikiru tells the deceptively simple story of a man's final months. Kurosawa was inspired by The Death of Ivan Ilych and, admittedly, the subject matter of a man who has wasted his life being prompted by imminent death to examine his life & make something of what little he has left was not new even when Tolstoy penned his take on it. Kurosawa brings his master director's touch to an age-old idea. What does it mean to live?

A bland middle-aged government functionary who has spent thirty years rubber-stamping pieces of paper finds he is dying of stomach cancer. A slow, lonely, painful death over the next six months is all that awaits him. There are two parts to the movie. The awakening and the action. In the awakening, the man comes to grip with his fate and the realization that he has not lived his own life. This part ends with the man having the epiphany that he does not have to go quietly (and pointlessly) into that good night. The action part is him leaving his legacy by making a difference in the lives of others and the effect of that legacy on those who remember him. His legay: he endures all sorts of humiliation and obstructions as he secures the building of a playground in a poor neighborhood.

Kurosawa is telling two stories here. One is the story of dying man trying to understand and "live" his life at the last minute. The other is the story of postwar, defeated and forcibly democratized Tokyo, Japan. Written and filmed less than ten years after the atomic bombing and subsequent surrender, Kurosawa renders a somewhat daringly cynical portrayal of a Japan that has adopted Western ways more dutifully than competently. American censorship of Japanese movies had just ended the year Kurosawa filmed Ikiru. Western bureaucracy meets Japanese caste society. Oil and water. From work to baseball to nightlife, Kurosawa shows an Eastern people who have learned Western ways without yet understanding those ways. Complicating this is the generation gap between the young who are excited by Western capitalism and modernized social mores the older who cling to the only ways they know. Furthermore, Kurosawa's meticulous attention to detail in rendering a rebuilding society shows the effects of rationing on the average Japanese. For instance, a bright bubbly young lady shuttles from boring, tiring low paying job to boring, tiring low paying job as her proudly bought American stockings fill with holes. Kurosawa's Tokyo is grimy and dusty and distinctly unromantic. A Tokyo of useless nobodies, crass politicians, prostitutes, drunks, poor people, and unloving family members. The story of Japan parallels the story of the protagonist. Both have endured devastation and humiliation. Both are sick. Atomic fallout causes cancer and the man may very have been sickened by the fallout that spread all over Japan. Thousands were. Howver, the man is dying as Japan is recovering. Both are potentially redeemed through a deliberate change in worldview.

Takashi Shimura was one of Kurosawa's stable of actors and Kurosawa worked with Shimura over and over. Shimura's acting career spanned forty-five years and he was in over 200 movies. In Ikiru he is either in or referenced throughout the entire movie. Shimura gives an incredible performance as he evolves from pathetic sad sack to inspired man on a mission. Through Kurosawa's innovative use of wide screen close-ups, we are given the inspiration of a man who surprises himself by responding to suffering with a complete repudiation of his entire life up that point.

Kurosawa, a deft humanist, uses a deliberately objective narrator to show the man's ordinariness and thus, evokes a mixture of contempt and pity for this pathetic nobody and many a viewer will see themselves in a life wasted and ended so cruelly. This long, beautifully made film is Kurosawa at the height of his directorial powers.

Just Another Reason Why The "Lesser" Kurosawa Is Easily the Most Overrated Director of All Time
This review continues my recent assault on particular cinematic themes that annoy me incessantly, and therefore require a therapeutic purging via an extensive (and scathing) IMDb review. The topic in question here is Akira Kurosawa - hereafter referred to as the "lesser" Kurosawa, primarily because when one hears the name Kurosawa one should immediately think of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who is superior in almost every respect to this "lesser" Kurosawa, a director artificially propped up on an undeserving pedestal by a group of disillusioned followers. Sure, he had one solid film in Seven Samurai (1954), but every time I see his other movies I wonder how the hell anyone could think that this guy was a great director. It befuddles me, even though I am a huge fan of other directors from the same time period.

My primary problem with the "lesser" Kurosawa is his indisputable ability of getting the absolute worst out of his actors and actresses. In Ran (1985) Tatsuya Nakadai (who played Lord Hidetora) contributes a series of embarrassingly overacted moments during any and all scenes where strong emotion is required. In Hidden Fortress (1958) Misa Uehara (Princess Yuki) gives one of the worst performances of the 1950s. Even Toshiro Mifune had a truly ineptly performance in Rashomon (1950). In Dreams (1991) almost everyone stinks the place out. Ikiru (1952) continues the track record for this "lesser" Kurosawa, because Takashi Shimura (who plays Kanji Watanabe) is quite simply horrible in this film. He basically has three modes of facial expression:

1. Wimpering Crybaby Mode. 2. Sad Puppy Dog Mode. 3. Hallucinogenic Mode.

I'll leave it to the viewer to identify the specific instances where each of these modes are employed by Shimura, but I simply cannot help but comment on #2 above. During Sad Puppy Dog phases, Shimura's face lengthens and his eyes bug-out to make even fruit-flies jealous. Basically, he looks like a 3-year-old after being scolded, not a person of sufficient maturity enduring pain or suffering. He doesn't react to situations like any grown man would. In fact, the Watanabe character is so devoid of basic humanity that he comes off as a stand-in for Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm not kidding when I say that Shimura's facial expressions make Ikiru both unintentionally hilarious and infuriating. I literally wanted to strike him with a blunt object or stick needles in his eyes just so he'd stop staring pathetically at me through my television screen.

This whole situation ruins the entire film. The crux is that even a mediocre director should have prevented this by instructing Shimura appropriately. This "lesser" Kurosawa was apparently incapable of understanding the concept of "overacting", so he let Shimura ham it up for 140 minutes. You can almost hear this "lesser" Kurosawa behind the camera:

"You're a puppy dog, Takashi. You're a puppy dog. Show me those puppy dog eyes!"

It's no wonder why George Lucas found "inspiration" from the "lesser" Kurosawa's works, since Lucas practically perfected the "art" of getting the absolute worst out of his actors, regardless of how good they perform when not under the "influence" of good ole George.

Like many of the other works by this director, Ikiru is about an hour too long. Watching Watanabe go clubbing for 60 minutes was totally unnecessary. The very thin premise was stretched out for so long that I was reminded of Peter Jackson, who needed 600 minutes to tell one of the most basic, formulaic stories in the history of cinema. The "lesser" Kurosawa could have trimmed the first half, but in all honesty it would have only made this agonizing cinematic experience shorter, not better. Since the lead protagonist had the reason and intellect of a 3-year-old, there wasn't much in the way of potential development, and what little occurs comes from out of nowhere. The entire maturity of Watanabe is expressed in a segment spanning a few measly minutes, when he goes to work with zeal and runs out the front door to help the people. Kurosawa - in his infinite stupidity - then chooses to cut the sequence off completely, only to then shoot ahead half a year in time to show a bunch of politicians reminiscing about Watanabe's tasks for 45 minutes. There is simply no way that the viewer can relate to the revelatory happiness of the main character through the third-person conversations of characters that had a combined screen time of only a few minutes previously. It's a total miscalculation on the part of the director who takes the cheap way out with an abhorrently overrated "swing" scene in the snow. Yes, the scene is pretty, but it simply cannot substitute for a lack of character development that essentially occupies 5 total minutes out of a 140-minute film. And no, I refuse to count 30 minutes of puppy dog glances as character development.

The mediocrity of this much-loved "lesser" Kurosawa is even more evident in the fact that other, greatly superior dramatic directors like Yasujiro Ozu were making fantastic films like Early Summer (1951) and Tokyo Story (1953) - films that make Ikiru (1952) look like amateur hour at best, because they have everything lacking in this film - great acting, storyline, and character development with believable, realistic performances. It's a travesty that exceptional directors like Ozu must live in the shadows of a lesser director that was lucky enough to be admired by a few tasteless Californian bloodsuckers.

It's almost humorous that the "lesser" Kurosawa came out with Ikiru in the time period in-between Ozu's films mentioned above. We can safely call this a crap sandwich.

Ikiru is a thought provoking movie
Great movie by Kurosawa. It may seem slow for many people. But, its deliberate pace and silent moments intensifies the message for us:

Ikiru (To Live).