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There is a tragic irony in me writing about movies while sitting on my desk at a job I don't particularly enjoy. For numerous reasons, we often end up trapped in dead-end jobs or thankless careers; sometimes reasons we cannot or won't change, so we just wait as time to pass by, so we can go home, sleep, and wake up to do the same again. Sometimes it takes bravado to change things around, and sometimes it takes a terminal illness for us to realize how much time we've wasted in the wrong things.
Ikiru follows Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a man that is stuck in that cycle. After 30 years working a monotonous, bureaucratic job, he gets diagnosed with cancer, which prompts him to start making some changes in his life. He goes from a night of drinking with a novelist he meets at a bar, to spending whole days with a former co-worker half his age because he says he's "jealous" of her energy.
There is a very strong and ever-present critique of bureaucratic systems throughout the film. It is shown as something that stifles the efforts of the government to ultimately serve the public, as well as stifling those like Watanabe that work under that system. But the film is ultimately about his quest for purpose in the last stage of his life. It is a reminder that we can still make a difference regardless of how late we think it might be.
This is the first non-period film from Kurosawa that I see and you can notice a bit of a shift to a more "personal" approach to his direction, especially when compared to epics like Ran or Seven Samurai. There are a lot of close-ups, especially of Watanabe's face, where you can literally see his despair and anguish as he tries to figure out what to do with what's left of his life. His exchanges with the novelist (Yūnosuke Itō) and the female co-worker (Miki Odagiri) are two effective ways in which the film anchors the first two acts of the film.
However, there is a storytelling device used in the last act that I didn't find as effective. I felt it muddled the overall impact, but not by much. Overall, the film is a poignant and heart-warming look at life and the choices we can still make while there's still time. There are two instances when Watanabe sings a song called "Gondola no Uta", which are probably the emotional peaks of the film. A song whose lyrics reminds us that "life is brief" and that we should do the things we want, "for there is no such thing as tomorrow, after all". Maybe I should learn from that.
Grade:
IKIRU
(1952, Kurosawa)
A film from Akira Kurosawa
(1952, Kurosawa)
A film from Akira Kurosawa
"We only realize how beautiful life is when we face death. And even then, few of us realize it. The worst among us know nothing of life until they die."
There is a tragic irony in me writing about movies while sitting on my desk at a job I don't particularly enjoy. For numerous reasons, we often end up trapped in dead-end jobs or thankless careers; sometimes reasons we cannot or won't change, so we just wait as time to pass by, so we can go home, sleep, and wake up to do the same again. Sometimes it takes bravado to change things around, and sometimes it takes a terminal illness for us to realize how much time we've wasted in the wrong things.
Ikiru follows Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a man that is stuck in that cycle. After 30 years working a monotonous, bureaucratic job, he gets diagnosed with cancer, which prompts him to start making some changes in his life. He goes from a night of drinking with a novelist he meets at a bar, to spending whole days with a former co-worker half his age because he says he's "jealous" of her energy.
There is a very strong and ever-present critique of bureaucratic systems throughout the film. It is shown as something that stifles the efforts of the government to ultimately serve the public, as well as stifling those like Watanabe that work under that system. But the film is ultimately about his quest for purpose in the last stage of his life. It is a reminder that we can still make a difference regardless of how late we think it might be.
This is the first non-period film from Kurosawa that I see and you can notice a bit of a shift to a more "personal" approach to his direction, especially when compared to epics like Ran or Seven Samurai. There are a lot of close-ups, especially of Watanabe's face, where you can literally see his despair and anguish as he tries to figure out what to do with what's left of his life. His exchanges with the novelist (Yūnosuke Itō) and the female co-worker (Miki Odagiri) are two effective ways in which the film anchors the first two acts of the film.
However, there is a storytelling device used in the last act that I didn't find as effective. I felt it muddled the overall impact, but not by much. Overall, the film is a poignant and heart-warming look at life and the choices we can still make while there's still time. There are two instances when Watanabe sings a song called "Gondola no Uta", which are probably the emotional peaks of the film. A song whose lyrics reminds us that "life is brief" and that we should do the things we want, "for there is no such thing as tomorrow, after all". Maybe I should learn from that.
Grade: