Film Review
Sandwiched between
Seven Samurai (1954) and
Throne of Blood (1957), two of
his undisputed masterpieces, Akira Kurosawa made this far more modest
film which reflected his deep personal concerns about living in the
atomic age. Overlooked to the point that only dedicated Kurosawa
fans know of the film's existence,
I
Live in Fear is a modest entry in the director's oeuvre but it
is nonetheless an important work, revealing more about 'Kurosawa the
man' than most of his grander, better-known offerings. The film
was made at the height of the Cold War, at a time when the destruction
of two major Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) by American atom
bombs at the end of WWII was still fresh in the memories of most
Japanese people. Only one year before Kurosawa began work on the
film, the Americans had detonated an H-bomb on Bikini Atoll as a test
exercise - the radiation had reached as far as Japan's fishing waters
and affected several fishermen. Surely, in such a world, a sane
man had every right to be scared? This is the question that
Kurosawa compels us to ponder in
I
Live in Fear, one of his bleakest, most socially relevant films.
In the public perception of the 1950s, atomic radiation was certainly
one of the great terrors of the age, as is evident from the countless
number of films made in that decade in which it features prominently,
most notably science-fiction films such as
The Incredible Shrinking Man
(1957) and
Them! (1954), and of course the
original
Godzilla films made
in Japan. Comparatively few film directors were minded to examine
the psychological and human consequences of living in the atomic age,
which makes Kurosawa's
I Live in Fear
all the more important as a social document of its era. The film
was not a great success - in fact it was one of the director's biggest
commercial failures and he decided against giving it an international
release. It was not until 1967 that the film received a
theatrical release in the United States.
I Live in Fear is not only a
cogent expression of Cold War anxieties, succinctly expressed through
an old man's efforts to avoid the bomb by moving his
whole family to the other side of the planet; it is also one of Kurosawa's
most scathing critiques of Japanese society, finding fault with that
most sacred of institutions, the family. The central character in
the film, a 70-year-old foundry owner named Nakajima, is the archetypal
Japanese patriarch, the head of the household who must be obeyed and
respected at all times. Nakajima thinks he is acting in the best
interests of his family, but what his family see is a man who threatens
to destroy their comfortable way of life with his paranoid
delusions. Kurosawa presents a moral dilemma - do the family
stick to tradition and go along with Nakajima, knowing it will be the
ruin of them; or do they turn against him and have him committed to a
psychiatric institution? By challenging one of the basic
precepts of Japanese society, by implying that elders can be deluded
and therefore dangerous, Kurosawa is venturing into very controversial
territory, and this could be the main reason why the film failed to
find an audience in Japan.
The social critique is very suggestive (a reflection perhaps of the
director's antipathy towards his own father, who was by all accounts
something of a tyrant) but it is apparent that Kurosawa's main intent
is elsewhere - to expose public complacency over the atom bomb and to
ask simply: should we be afraid? Like the court counsellor
Dr Harada, we are invited to judge whether an individual is mad to be
afraid of the bomb or whether society in general is mad to totally
disregard the threat it poses. Like Harada, our initial
impression is that Nakajima is an insane paranoiac. He cowers in
terror when he sees lightning in a thunderstorm and he is prepared to
use up all of his resources in an attempt to flee to what he believes
to be a safe haven. By the end of the film, we are less certain
and it begins to appear that Nakajima may be the only sane person in
the world, the only person with the imagination to see what is coming
and the courage to do something about it. Kurosawa does not
resolve the dilemma either way; he merely invites us to consider
whether we are right to close our eyes to the danger that hangs over us
all. Perhaps if more people were afraid, and were able to
articulate their fear, the world might one day be rid of nuclear
weapons...
Doubtless, it is the controversial themes that Kurosawa broaches in
I Live in Fear, with characteristic
directness, which have consigned the film to virtual obscurity,
although on both the technical and artistic front it has almost as much
to commend it as most of the director's other work. Kurosawa's
decision to shoot several interior scenes with multiple cameras (and later
select the best shots in the editing suite) instead of shooting a scene
several times with different cameras was an innovation and is something
that gives his film a fiercely intense immediacy and gripping
near-documentary realism. An even bolder decision was the casting
of the 35-year-old Toshirô Mifune in the central role of the
70-year-old patriarch Nakajima, an inspired move as it turned
out. Mifune's portrayal of an old man is a little too mannered to
be entirely convincing but the actor brings exactly the right
combination of controlled hysteria and dignity to the part - he
energises the film and provides it with its moral and emotional core,
repelling his audience whilst somehow also retaining their sympathy.
Another of Kurosawa's favourite actors, Takashi Shimura, takes the
film's other major role, that of the court counsellor Harada, the man
with the unenviable task of deciding whether Nakajima is of sound
mind. Shimura's performance is, as ever, flawless and brims with
humanity, the perfect conduit by which Kurosawa can direct his moral
conundrum at his audience. The final sequence in which Harada
confronts a completely broken down Nakajima is one of the most
devastating and chilling in Kurosawa's entire oeuvre, and the linchpin
of the film. As he is spellbound by the sight of a setting sun,
Nakajima appears transfigured by his worst fear - his world being
consumed in a ball of flame. Beside him, Harada watches in
stunned silence and seems to experience his own moment of epiphany, the
realisation that Nakajima may be the sanest man in the world.
Tragically, this was to be composer Fumio Hayasaka's final
collaboration with Kurosawa (he had previously scored many of the
director's films, notably
Rashomon,
Ikiru and
Seven Samurai). His death at
41 from tuberculosis came as a great personal and professional blow to
Kurosawa. Hayasaka's experimental score for
I Live in Fear (which was completed by Masaru Sato)
contributes much to
the film's dark mood of paranoia and oppression; it also provides a
potent evocation of the subconscious terrors that prey on us all as we
go on living, seemingly in ignorance of the radioactive stormcloud that is
coming our way.
© James Travers 2012
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Akira Kurosawa film:
The Lower Depths (1957)