starring Takashi Shimura
directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa
143 minutes
Japanese with English subtitles
Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) has never missed a day of work in the Public Works department when he finds out that he has stomach cancer. He has six to twelve months to live. He tells no one, not even his adult son, but he stops showing up for work. He contemplates suicide but can't go through with it.
An act of kindness and a chance meeting with a stranger lead to a drunken night. The next day he is heading home when he runs into Toyo Odagiri, one of his co-workers. She wants to quit but she needs his permission to leave. He grants it but then they wind up spending a few days hanging out together. She doesn't understand what he wants and doesn't know about his illness until he tells her during their last moments together.
Toyo quit because she wanted to do something creative. She builds children's toys in her new job. Her revelation give Kanji an idea. He returns to work and spends his remaining days working to get a playground built.
The third and final act of the movie takes place at the wake for Kanji Watanabe. It takes up roughly a third of the movie's run time. The question arises as to who deserves credit for the building of the park. Watanabe was never publicly thanked. It is revealed to those present that he died from cancer but then the question arises as whether Watanabe knew he was dying of cancer.
Thoughts
The title of the movie translates as "To Live".
Kanji shows up in brief flashbacks during the wake.
What comes out of the final act, and had been shown early in the movie, is that generally speaking the various departments of the city government don't try very hard to get anything done because the bureaucratic system makes it damn near impossible to get anything done. It was only Watanabe's persistence that got the park built, even thought the Deputy Mayor and other insist that he doesn't deserve the credit.
This movie makes me think of Seppuku (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967), both Japanese films and both directed by Masaki Kobayashi. Both films slowly build to explosive final acts. Those films contain fights, unlike Ikiru, but as with Ikiru they would not have impressed me as much as they did if they had been constructed differently and everything had not built to the explosive or (in the case of Ikiru) revelatory ending.
I found this movie, especially the final act, to be very moving. I'm torn over how to rate Takashi Shimura's performance. It was very minimalist but at times displayed great emotion. I would probably need to see the movie again to rate it properly. I'm not ready to watch the movie again just yet but I could see myself doing so in the future.
See also Plain Label Podcast and Bald Move for their thoughts about Ikiru.
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