Ikiru
(1952)

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

A movie to shake you loose and make you think about what’s really crucial in life, this is not your typical Kurosawa movie. It was never--and will never be--turned into a spaghetti western or Star Wars. It is the story of government clerk, Kanji Watanabe (deftly portrayed by Takashi Shimura), a man who realizes that he has wasted his life, upon discovering that he has inoperable stomach cancer. Understatement is key here. This is a very emotional story, but none of its poignant highlights are in pounded like railroad spikes, things unfold at a very natural pace. Parts of Watanabe’s journey towards enlightenment are joyous, others parts are frustrating, and others still, are excruciating. If this were an American film, it would hold your hand and prompt tears with swelling musical scores. Because it is a Japanese film, or perhaps more importantly, a Kurosawa film, the finer points are given the space and respect that they deserve, to wriggle and breathe. There is a true digestion of the emotional tracts of Watanabe’s saga. Kurosawa was trained as a painter (apparently his storyboards were full scale paintings) and in a way, Ikiru has the scope and depth of a beautiful painting. It works not so much as a sequence of events, but as a portrait of life, or “Ikiru” (loosely, Japanese for living). But as much as this is Watanabe’s story, it is also the story of bureaucracy. Of the system running in place to serve it’s own needs, and, of the people working within it as nothing more than cogs. Those who try to use the system to affect change are trotted in circles until they give up. Watanabe’s realization of this is slow. He doesn’t really seem to get it until three quarters of the way into the film. Once he does, the story switches to a series of flashbacks expertly beaded together to not so much expedite the story, as to insert all of the necessary elements into it without making it bulge. It ell works extremely well. Shimura really anchors the thing. He doesn’t wear Watanabe’s agony, it wears him. As he pains over his muddled personal life and squandered professional existence, his face looks like might turn into tears. Like it is about to fade all the way to black. His voice crawls with the same lurching ache. He fully embraces the hopelessness. There were moments in this movie where I wanted to scream at Watanabe. There were moments where I wanted to cry with him. There were moments when I wanted to hug the little fucker. And when it was over, there was an elongated moment of catharsis, wherein I wanted to make change myself, in my own life, and in the lives of others. I wanted to tear the system open and shine a warm, healing light into it’s rotten innards. But then it happened, as it always does. I remembered that this was just a movie and I am still just my lazy self. I hate that.