Ikiru (1952)

Toho Company
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Miki Odagiri

A motion picture that lies within the realm of both deeply sad, yet inspiring, Ikiru is considered by Akira Kurosawa to be his finest work. A film about life, death, loneliness, and revelation, Kurosawa delivers a melancholic story that studies the meaning of what it is to “live.” Though not of his best known, or attention-grabbing features, Ikiru has been near universally admired, hailed as one of the great, exceptional films in cinema history by critics and filmmakers all around the world.

 

Ikiru is a Japanese drama about a bureaucrat’s struggle to find self-meaning after discovering he has cancer. Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) woefully discovers he has but a short time to live with a cancer diagnosis and is devastated to how little he has accomplished in his personal life. After failing to find joy indulging in the city nightlife or answers in examining the youthful exuberance of a former subordinate (Miki Odagiri), Kanji is inspired to accomplish something meaning for others in the form of a pushing through bureaucracy the construction of a park before he succumbs to his illness. At his wake, co-workers and family members ponder that which changed in Kanji, vowing to be as inspiring as he was before his death, but sadly falling immediately back into emptiness of bureaucracy.

 

This Akira Kurosawa film is a sad, slow tale that studies a man’s self-discovery of what makes life worth living. Focusing on a plain character with a painfully slow, frustrating job where little is completed and mostly leaves many frustrated comes to be the perfect setting for reflection on life’s meeting in this case. Just pondering this last sentence describing the feature makes me wonder how difficult it is to even consider watching this picture, but Kurosawa accomplishes a film of such grace with skill as only a master craftsman of cinema can do. Accompanied by the amazing performance of Takashi Shimura we are given a performance easily understood the world throughout in a film with much to say beyond its time.

 

With a plot concept of a man who knowing he is has but a limited time to his life, Kurosawa collaborated with writing partner Hideo Oguni to structure the story of a man bound to find significance where there was none before. Consulting Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” it was decided to have the main character die half the way through the film and creating more dramatic effect by observing those pondering the actions of the main character directly before his death while still allowing us to visit the character through flashback.

 

Akira Kurosawa has a way with using his camera where even in still shots, with little action to frame within them carry such emotion and language, even in somber silence. Utilizing the talent of one of his favorite performers in Takashi Shimura, Watanabe ca be seen as being similar to a Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. There is very little disconnect of West and East in how the story is presented, both are men coming to their end and looking back at what they considered is accomplishment t to them. Here, in Ikiru the definition of accomplishment dramatically shifts with his impending death and his hope do what he can in his short time to achieve something, insignificant as it may be with what time he has. Shimura delivers a performance that evokes the sadness of life hollowed of true joy or achievement. A bureaucrat focused on process and duty, not understanding that life has passed him by until it is too late, Shimura captures a shell of a man desperate to fill it before his life closes.

 

So much of the movie revolves around Shimura that it is easy to forget the slew of characters that pass through the film quickly, yet effectively. Miki Odagiri stands out capturing the joyful young lady that works under Watanabe with whom he takes interest in studying. Her exuberant performance is as attractive to us, the audience, as it is to Watanabe, providing an understanding of one who is willing to leave a steady job that is empty for something else more fulfilling. Her performance is so lively, yet fragile that it is surprising to find this was Odagiri’s first movie role.

 

In post war Japan some citizens perceived Ikiru negatively, as a slight to the society that prided on honoring parents, following procedures, and their nation who was coming off seven years of American observed occupation. However, many film critics would praise the picture, director, and star while the feature would slowly make its way through the international market after success within the film festival circuit.

 

With the passage of time Akira Kurosawa would become one of the great praised filmmakers of all time and Ikiru considered one of his finest, landing significant praise by filmmaker and admirers including future cornerstones of the industry a generation later Marin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Other Kurosawa films like Seven Samurai, which was his very next feature, or Yojimbo would become all-time classics, but Ikiru holds on an emotionally deeper state as the filmmaker is able to dig beyond the surface to present a picture that last so well all these years later.