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Ikiru
1952
Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing of significance. After discovering he is suffering from a terminal illness, Kanji becomes intensely self-absorbed until he finds a mission to build a playground for the children in an .. Read more
| Starring | Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Miki Odagiri |
|---|---|
| Director | Akira Kurosawa |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
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Ikiru
Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing of significance. After discovering he is suffering from a terminal illness, Kanji becomes intensely self-absorbed until he finds a mission to build a playground for the children in an urban ghetto as a way of coming to peace with his life.
| Starring | Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Miki Odagiri |
|---|---|
| Director | Akira Kurosawa |
| Studio | BFI VIDEO |
| Run time | DVD: 2 hrs 20 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
| Language | DVD: Japanese |
| Subtitles | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 06 Oct 2003 Production year: 1952 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (2)
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Director Akira Kurosawa is celebrated for his samurai dramas, notably Rashomon and Seven Samurai, but many critics regard this contemporary drama as his greatest achievement. The story would appear to have many pitfalls: a meek civil servant is told he has terminal cancer, so he gets drunk, confronts the emptiness of his life and finally makes amends by turning a derelict city area into a children's playground. This is almost the preserve of the American TV movie — crassly manipulative — but such is the delicacy of Kurosawa's direction, and the discreet power of Takashi Shimura's performance, that you will be moved to tears.
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Easy to patronise as a classic of humanism; a celebration of the intrinsic nobility of human nature as a humble civil... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful member's review
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30 out of 30 people found this review helpful
It's a Wonderful Film
Imagine "It's a Wonderful Life", but at the point where Jimmy Stewart realises life IS worth living, we cut to his wake, seeing none of his triumph or redemption. At the wake, everyone who crushed him at the start of the film takes credit for solving all his problems.
The wake opens with the self-righteous opinions of his superiors, whose contempt for the individual is shattered by the genuine grief of the mothers Watanabe worked for at the end. As the wake progresses, those closest to him begin to realise just what a difference Watanabe made and pledge to follow his example. At this point I suspect the oft-mooted Hollywood remake would close with a slow zoom to Watanabe's saintly photo.
Kurosawa, however, knows us better than this. As soon as Watanabe's colleagues get the opportunity to follow his example, they abandon the idea, returning to the lingering death of spirit that Watanabe only escaped by becoming terminally ill.
This being Kurosawa, you don't just get a fascinating story, beautifully told and heart-rendingly acted, you also get a visual and aural feast: from the oppression of Watanabe's office, to the drunken whirl of an impossibly packed Tokyo nightclub, to the beauty of Watanabe's passing.
Ikiru tells us so much about our society that sadly has not changed since we first started to surrender our potential as a species to the soulless security of rigid bureaucracy.
Well, no more! I'm going to turn over a new leaf! His death will not be in vain! -
Most recent members' review
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Thought provoking masterpiece
Ikiru is a film about life. Constantly complex and thought-provoking, although simple at the same time; it tells a story about life's limits, how we perceive life and the fact that life is short and not to be wasted. Our hero is Kanji Watanabe, the most unlikely 'hero' of all time. He works in a dreary city office, where nothing happens and it's all very meaningless. Watanabe is particularly boring, which has lead to him being nicknamed 'The Mummy' by a fellow worker. He later learns that he is dying from stomach cancer and that he only has six months to live. But Watanabe has been dead for thirty years, and now that he's learned that his life has a limit; it's time for Watanabe to escape his dreary life and finally start living. What follows is probably the most thoughtful analysis of life ever filmed.
Ikiru marks a departure for Akira Kurosawa, a man better known for his samurai films, but it's a welcome departure in my opinion. Kurosawa constantly refers to Watanabe as 'our hero' throughout the film, and at first this struck me as rather odd because, as I've mentioned, he's probably the least likely hero that Kurosawa has ever directed; but that's just it! This man is not a superhero samurai, but rather an ordinary guy that decides he doesn't want to be useless anymore. That's why he's 'our hero'. Kurosawa makes us feel for the character every moment he's on screen - we're sorry that he's wasted his life, and we're sorry that his wasted life is about to be cruelly cut short. However, despite the bleak and miserable facade that this movie gives out, there is a distinct beauty about it that shines through. The beauty emits from the way that Watanabe tries to redeem his life; because we feel for him and are with him every step of the way, it's easy to see why Watanabe acts in the way he does. Ikiru is a psychologically beautiful film.
It could be said that the fantastic first hour and a half is let down by a more politically based final third - and this is true. The movie needs it's final third in order to finish telling the story, but it really doesn't work as well as the earlier parts did. However, Kurosawa still delights us with some brilliant imagery and the shot of Watanabe on a swing is the most poetically brilliant thing that Kurosawa ever filmed. Together with the music and the rest of the film that you've seen so far; that picture that Kurosawa gives us is as moving as it is brilliant. -
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