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Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Starring Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Kyôko Seki
Japan, 1952
Not Rated (nothing offensive)
THE MIRACLE OF DEATH
Ikiru is easily one of the most poignant and important life-and-death
films I have ever seen. Frankly, I was never impressed with Kurosawa’s
Seven Samurai or Rashomon. I respected them for being good films,
but neither had qualities to captivate me, except for a number of
portions in the latter. I recently viewed Ikiru (which translates into the
very appropriate To Live) on television and was astonished by
Kurosawa's command of everyday city life away from his samurai
films. It is truly a motion picture of awesome emotion-
soaring and sinking, but never stagnant. It is to death what Chaplin’s
work is to life- it celebrates it.
Ikiru tells the story of Mr. Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a bureaucrat who, for 30 years, has sat at the same desk sifting through stacks upon stacks of papers in the Tokyo City Hall. He has had little pleasure in his life, everything is plain and dull and just another thing to abide by or accept. People complain to him and other City Hall officials about various Tokyo problems, such as dirty water, but his job is not to do something, but to pretend he’s doing something. This is all his job calls for and consists of. For 30 years he has been in a sort of cocoon, shielding himself from emotion and hard work, or at least hard work that requires thought.
This could have been caused by a contemptuous son named Mitsuo and his wife who both live with him in a crowded house. He claims to have given up his life for his son and the lack of appreciation he has received kills and crushes him. He refused to remarry after his wife’s death so Mitsuo would not feel ill at ease or tortured. Now, his boy has turned his back on him and is thirsty for inheritance.
As the film opens, we see an X-ray image of Mr. Watanabe’s chest. He has cancer. He does not yet know it, but we are told he will soon discover his fatal illness. When he goes to the doctor, in the waiting room, a man sinisterly whispers in his ears the very symptoms which he has and labels the disease as CANCER. The man tells Mr. Watanabe that the doctors tell their cancer patients that their illness is curable and minor. The doctor’s words echo his and Watanabe learns he has cancer.
He wanders the streets in a bewilderment. He has wasted his entire existence, so what does he do now? Wallow in regret? Kill himself? He decides on getting drunk on saké and, at a bar, asks a writer of cheap books to show him a good time because he doesn’t know how to how to have one. He sings of loneliness and the shortness of life at a night club and garners the attention and silence of the entire room. Tears stream down his face.
The next day, he returns home with a fellow worker at the City Hall who wishes to resign. She needs his stamp of approval before she can leave for her next job. His maid, son, and daughter-in-law view her as Watanabe’s young mistress and are ashamed. When Watanabe finally decides to tell his family of his cancer, they interrupt him and curse and scold him for spending his money on a younger woman when they have a right to his inheritance. Soon, Watanabe becomes all too fond of the younger woman he has allowed to resign with his stamp. He is in admiration of her happiness and care-free attitudes. He is jealous of her ease and her youthfulness. He nearly scares her away.
What Ikiru points out is how much death makes clear to us. Without death, we would probably squander our immortal lives. Death is like a luminous deadline that reminds us not to take anything for granted, especially time. Mr. Watanabe wasted his time as a corpse going through the motions down at City Hall, stamping papers and breathing air and surviving. Death is a wake-up call to him. "Feeling something is better than feeling nothing at all," the film tells us. Watanabe realizes he must do something to make up for his life’s emptiness. He has nothing to fear now except leaving the Earth without contributing anything important.
In a way, Ikiru celebrates death. Mr. Watanabe is not cited or given the full credit due him for the park he eventually gets built in the end, but he knows what he did and it doesn’t matter what anyone else knows. The people who discover he was the driving force behind the park are inspired.
We never actually see the park being built. First, we witness Watanabe’s funeral. He died in the park in one of the most stirring final scenes in history. After many deny Watanabe’s contributions to the park’s construction, a full-fledged discussion takes place, providing flashbacks in which we see the dying Watanabe holding on to life just to see his last achievement pull through. This final portion of Ikiru has some minor parallels to the flashbacks and remembrances of the interviewees in Citizen Kane.
I do not particularly enjoy samurai movies or westerns. Only a select few have summoned my positive attention. Kurosawa’s samurai pictures inspired many western films and throngs of prominent directors worldwide. Seven Samurai only made a dent on my memory; Ikiru, Kurosawa’s ultimately universal observance of life and death, has seared great memories into my mind and carved its own place in the rooms of my heart.
By Andrew Chan
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