The Bottom Line
- Masterpiece of world cinema directed by Akira Kurosawa
- Emotionally and intellectually engaging
- Humanistic meditation on what it means to live
- Some may find pacing slow during film’s first hour and a half
- Ending may be too bleak for some
- Some might prefer a less tough-minded, more sentimental movie
Description
- Criterion Collection two-disc DVD set containing Japanese-language drama "Ikiru" (1952)
- Movie directed by Akira Kurosawa ("Seven Samurai," "Rashomon")
- DVD contains scholarly feature-length audio commentary by Kurosawa expert Stephen Prince
- DVD contains documentary featuring interviews with Kurosawa on sets of his later films (81 min.)
- DVD contains documentary on "Ikiru" (41 min.)
- Good picture and sound quality (for a restored classic)
- Feature run time: 2 hours 23 minutes
- DVD release date: January 6, 2004
Guide Review - "Ikiru" DVD Review
Set in Tokyo in about 1951, Kurosawa's "Ikiru" is a character study of Kanji Watanabe, an aging low-level bureaucrat who discovers he has only months to live. I'm impressed by the movie's unconventional narrative structure. Watanabe carouses amidst the vibrant Tokyo nightlife scene, then gets into a curious relationship with a vivacious young woman. But eventually he returns to his job as a section chief at City Hall, and the film abruptly leaps ahead five months to his wake. There we learn what Watanabe did during his last few months as his former co-workers get drunk and try to come to terms with what has occurred.
In the role of Watanabe, Takashi Shimura gives one of the most memorable performances by an actor in any movie I have seen. Here Shimura plays an everyman, and his expressive face and body language perfectly capture for me the terminally ill petty bureaucrat. To my mind, one of the most moving scenes in all of cinema is the one near the film's end where Watanabe, alone in a small playground, swings to and fro amidst gently falling snow.
I see the movie as a thought-provoking meditation on what it means to live, and I believe that is what makes it resonate so strongly, both intellectually and emotionally. It is a story of an examined life, albeit one looked at when time has all but run out. It is a film that hits deep enough that it makes me reexamine my own life and the lives of others around me.
