Ikiru (1952)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Film Review

For every great filmmaker there is invariably one work that stands out as being particularly revealing of its author, exposing his humanity and his deeper concerns with human issues more than any other.  For Akira Kurosawa, this film has to be Ikiru, an intensely poignant meditation on mortality that many consider to be his finest work.   Lacking the attention-grabbing spectacle and unflagging energy of Kurosawa's better-known Samurai films, Ikiru is a surprisingly understated affair, one of the director's more sensitive and sober cinematic offerings, and yet it is as perfectly composed and compelling as any other of the master's great films.  In Kurosawa's impressive oeuvre, few films can match the psychological realism and emotional power of Ikiru.

Ikiru translates as 'To Live' or 'Living' - an apt title for a film which is about a man who, on discovering he is soon to die from an incurable cancer illness, suddenly awakens to the preciousness of life.  The main character Kanji Watanabe, a medium rank bureaucrat buried in an unimportant government department, is at one point described as a mummy, and the description appears to be laughably apt.  His vitality worn down by years of soul-destroying mechanical routine, Watanabe sits at his desk like a desiccated cadaver, stamping useless pieces of paper as though he were a mere machine.  It is only when he discovers he has six months of life left that he becomes conscious of the futility of his existence.  His initial reaction to his impending demise is to go on a hedonistic spree, but he soon realises that this too is just another pointless way of marking time.  Just when he appears to be on the point of giving up Watanabe has his moment of epiphany: there is a cause he can champion that will allow him to achieve something of value.  His living will not have been in vain.

Bizarrely, it is at this up-beat point that the story suddenly fast-forwards five months to the day after Watanabe's death.  We do not see Watanabe put his scheme into action and therefore we cannot be sure whether he was successful or not, whether he did indeed find meaning in his life.  Instead, much as in Kurosawa's previous film Rashomon (1950), various lesser characters recount their memories of Watanabe in the months, weeks and days preceding his death, in the form of short flashbacks.  As in Rashomon, the recollections differ subtly in their details and it is left to the spectator to decide which, if any, is factually correct.  Our natural desire to see that Watanabe did have a positive impact on the world is initially rewarded when his colleagues, moved by his courage and resolve, decide to follow his example and make a more useful contribution to society.  But this apparently hopeful outcome is immediately contradicted by the sequence that follows, and the bureaucrats soon resume their old practice of pen-pushing, frittering away their lives in pointless time-wasting drudgery.  Only the condemned man, it seems, has the right to express his individuality in the bureaucratic mill that is local government.

Ikiru has several points of interest.  First of all it features what is most probably the best screen performance by Takashi Shimura, a highly distinguished actor of Japanese cinema who appeared in no less than 21 of Kurosawa's films - that's five more than that other notable Kurosawa collaborator, Toshirô Mifune.  Unlike Mifune, who could essentially play only one kind of character (albeit brilliantly so), Shimura was a remarkably versatile actor who is as convincing as the warrior chief in Seven Samurai (1954) as he is in more low-key roles such as the one he plays in Ikiru.  Arguably, Shimura brings as much to Ikiru as Kurosawa; his portrayal of a man facing up to his mortality is harrowingly true to life and one of the great character portrayals of Japanese cinema.  The sequence in which Watanabe, almost completely crushed by worthlessness and depression, seats himself in a nightclub and gently croons an old romantic ballad to himself is heartrendering in the extreme.

The film is also to be noted for its subtle but highly effective use of subjective techniques, which allow us to get into the head of the central protagonist and see the world through his eyes.  The best example of this is the extended sequence in which Watanabe goes out for a night on the town, something he has apparently never done before.  Kurosawa convinces us of the novelty of the experience by his expressionistic use of sound and camerawork, which conveys a powerful impression of the vitality that surges into the main protagonist's consciousness, awakening his zest for life whilst leaving him totally lost and disoriented.  Towards the end of the film, there are some sequences of breathtakingly lyrical power, most notably the one in which the camera slowly tracks across the children's playground in a nocturnal snowfall, revealing Watanabe contentedly playing on a swing.  This is the one part of the film that cuts against its almost unbreakable mood of pessimism and leaves us with a slender vestige of hope.  Watanabe may not have been able to convince others that his life has been worthwhile, but it is evident that he himself believes he has achieved something, and surely that is all that matters.

Film Synopsis

For thirty years, Kanji Watanabe has worked in the same office in a local government department, hoarding his money because he does not know what to do with it, afraid to take a day off work through fear that no one would miss him.  It has been many years since his wife died and he is becoming increasingly estranged from his grown-up son who is looking forward to the day he retires so that he can help himself to his father's retirement bonus.  Suffering from acute stomach pains, Watanabe visits his doctor and, although he is not told as such, he realises that he has stomach cancer and may have as little as six months left to live.  Immediately Watanabe is struck by the meaningless of his life.  For all the thousands of hours he has put into his work he has achieved nothing.  In a deep state of depression he withdraws a large sum of money from his bank and decides to have a night out on the town.  He meets a world-weary young writer who, moved by his plight, shows him the fleshpots the city has to offer.  Watanabe then attempts to buy the company of one of his young female colleagues, leading his son to think that he is about to embark on a new love affair.  It is at this point that Watanabe realises he can do something meaningful - he can use his position to push through a development project to build a children's playground on an unwanted area of wasteland.  After Watanabe's death five months later, his colleagues reflect on his part in the project.  Some believe that the deputy mayor is right to claim all the credit for himself; others are certain that without Watanabe's persistence the playground would never have been completed.  What none of them can account for is the sudden change in Watanabe's behaviour.  It was as if he knew he was going to die...