Ikiru (1952)

Director:

Akira Kurosawa

Writers:

Shinobu Hashimoto (writer)
Akira Kurosawa (writer)

Release Date:

25 March 1956 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

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...

Plot Keywords:

Office | Cancer | Park | City Hall | Playground

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 5 wins

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Takashi Shimura	...	Kanji Watanabe
Shinichi Himori	...	Kimura
Haruo Tanaka	...	Sakai
Minoru Chiaki	...	Noguchi
Miki Odagiri	...	Toyo Odagiri, employee
Bokuzen Hidari	...	Ohara
Minosuke Yamada	...	Subordinate Clerk Saito
Kamatari Fujiwara	...	Sub-Section Chief Ono
Makoto Kobori	...	Kiichi Watanabe, Kanji's Brother
Nobuo Kaneko	...	Mitsuo Watanabe, Kanji's son
Nobuo Nakamura	...	Deputy Mayor
Atsushi Watanabe	...	Patient
Isao Kimura	...	Intern
Masao Shimizu	...	Doctor
Yûnosuke Itô	...	Novelist

Also Known As:

Doomed
Living (International: English title) (informal English title)
To Live (International: English title) (informal English title)

Runtime:

143 min | Sweden:123 min (cut version)

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese | English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Not Rated | Sweden:11 | Finland:S | UK:PG (video rating) (1994) | UK:A (original rating) | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Japan

Company:

Toho Company

Trivia:

The literal translation of Ikiru is "To Live".

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: A beer sign is backwards in a bar scene, revealing the use of a mirror image.

Quotes:

Novelist: How tragic that man can never realize how beautiful life is until he is face to face with death.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (1999) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Come On-A My House

Complex and 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.