Ikiru (1952)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Yunosuke Ito, Miki Odagiri
Rated: NR

I have read two interpretations of the title "Ikiru". The most accepted is "to live", the other is "doomed". Both are perfectly reasonable translations, and at varying times of the film seem more applicable than the other. Akira Kurosawa's deeply humanist mediation on mortality and the need for self-fulfillment is both intimate and universal, tapping into the deep-seeded fears of every man and every woman who has been afraid of wasting their precious time on earth. A push and pull of despair and vitality, Kurosawa's protagonist, Watanabe, is the fearful face of death within us all.

Watanabe's end is certain. An early scene at a doctor's office informs him that he has stomach cancer and probably only has six months to live. He is a lonely bureaucrat who has spent his life seemingly doing little more than stamping papers and redirecting members of the public through a never ending cycle of red tape. A senior official in his field, all he has to show for his decades of public service is a certificate hanging on his wall and an ungrateful son who cares for nothing but his inheritance. Watanabe's nickname around the office is "the mummy".

When Watanabe leaves the doctor's office, the physician asks his assistant and a nurse what they would do if they new they were dying. Neither can give him a straight answer, and Watanabe isn't sure himself. As any normal person would do I'm sure, he draws 50,000 yen from his savings, finds another lost man at a bar and they spend his money on a night on the town. But of course sex and alcohol and loud hats do not make him happy, for how could material things be the essence of happiness?

He tries a different tactic. Befriending a young, vivacious coworker, he takes her out and they experience the city together, going ice skating, visiting carnivals, and he simply relishes in her existence as a person who is so alive. Surely that's closer, giving joy to another and bringing a smile to the less affluent. But she rejects him after a time, for he is the mummy after all.

This is what it is to be doomed for Kurosawa. To be directionless and unloved and alone, having spent a life dedicated to working, saving and scrimping and to what end? It's a frightening prospect to have wasted the best part of one's life doing menial tasks only to discover that you've never learned to live. He was dead when he took his job and as the sands of time slip through his fingers it is panic and despondency that fill the void.

Two-thirds into the movie Watanabe dies. We see nothing of his final moments and only know of his death because a narrator tells us it is so. The last forty minutes take place at his wake, where family members and fellow bureaucrats discuss his life and the impression he made. A playground was erected where an old cesspool used to fester, and the people of the community seem to attribute Watanabe's efforts to this perfect good. But self-congratulating members of the government cannot accept this. For who would they be if not the actual public servants?

Slowly we find that Watanabe made the decision to use all of his powers to help those less fortunate, cutting that tape and fighting an immovable object. It begs the question if he undertook the project to make himself feel whole, or if it was an altruistic conclusion he reached when pondering if the needs of the many outweigh the laziness of the few. Kurosawa would certainly argue the latter, but my own cynical nature doesn't allow me to believe something so cut and dry.

That said, a parting shot of Watanabe sitting on swing set, wreathed in snow, cooing the lullaby "Life Is Brief" can do nothing but make an man's emotions swell at the delicate good spirit of a man who wanted to put his 30 years of service to proper use. It is a shot which even though cloaked in the shadow of Death affirms that men can do the right thing when broken from the bonds of servitude to the idea that we work to live. It makes one want to be a better person.

Discussing the various aspects of the film would be a waste and an insult to the messages it imparts. For in this case it is not the brushstrokes but the final painting which matters most. I will say that it was with infinite care and love that rendered such a moving piece. It cries for pause and reflection, for a change in the daily habits of the mundane and useless, for deeds great and small that may not change the world, but ones that make the world a bit nicer to live in.

3.5/4