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Ikiru (To Live)
Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru contains two moments of such powerful emotional force that they are nearly unbearable to watch. But because this is vintage Kurosawa, we remain too mesmerized to look away from the stunning beauty and poetry that is found in these deep, impenetrable scenes of human reflection. These scenes might leave us drained, but Kurosawa tells his tale so well that to leave the film before it is finished would only drain us more. Who else can trigger such powerful emotional responses from the audience than Akira Kurosawa? Here is a film that stirred me so powerfully that no words, no matter how well formed, could possibly give it justice. It triggers something deep within our souls, tapping a place where mere words cannot, and should not, dwell. The first emotional powerhouse scene is one of pure sorrow. It takes place soon after the elderly protagonist Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), who has spent his entire life working as a civil service agent and hasn’t accomplished anything in either his business or personal life, has learned that he is dying of stomach cancer. He sits quietly in a bar, singing softly a song called “Life is Brief.” Tears stream down his lonely face as he comtemplates his wasted existence. He moves everyone in the room, all young partygoers, to silence, and us as well. It is a scene that cuts straight to the heart—one of the most heartbreaking moments in all of cinema. The second is a scene of pure joy, taking place in the film’s closing moments. Watanabe is still singing “Life is Brief,” but this time, it is in a park that he helped to build. He rocks softly on a swing set as fresh snow falls all around him. The look on his face is one of pure happiness and fulfillment. He is alone, but he still has rendered us silent. Though the song remains the same, all of the dynamics have shifted, and Watanabe, having found purpose in his life through service to others, sings now not out of sadness, but from a deep revelation that has awoken within him. Kurosawa cuts us straight to the heart again, but this time, we are so overcome with Watanabe’s joy that we can hardly stand to watch, so ashamed are we in the way that this everyman's journey has mirrored our own. We are forced to wonder if we have earned the right to sing the song again, on the same grounds that Watanabe has. All of Ikiru (“to live” in English) centers around these two scenes. Without one or the other, it cannot stand, because they are the essence of Watanabe’s story. “Life is brief” could work as an alternate title: The phrase first serves as his dilemma, and later as his motivation. Kurosawa, who also co-penned the story, divides Ikiru into three narrative parts that are all different in nature yet manage to come together to create a very satisfying narrative whole. The first part is a prologue in which women from a poor neighborhood seek to get their pool, which is flooding with sewage, cleaned up so that their children can have a safe, clean place to play. The apathetic civil service people keep referring them to someone else (“City health? No, that’s in the sewage plant’s jurisdiction.” “Sewage? No, you want park management.” “Park management? No, this is a job for…” etc.), so that by the end of the day, they have literally traveled all over town and accomplished nothing. Or rather, they have watched their city officials accomplish nothing. Watanabe is the initial source of their problems. He is a man who has worked at a dead-end job for thirty years and has accomplished nothing relevant in that time, except referring his company’s problems to someone else. Everyone in the job moves like a zombie—emotionless, bored and equally living on auto-pilot. Watanabe sits in a desk overlooking them all, seemingly their best example for proper work ethics. This is the scenario that begins part two of the story, in which Watanabe learns of his stomach cancer and is told that he has, at best, six months. When Watanabe receives this death sentence, he grows so depressed that he does not even have the will to attempt suicide. He spends his nights trembling in his bed with his blankets over his head, unable to look at the framed recognition for 25 years of public service that hangs on his wall. Watanabe’s most terrible realization is, of course, that death won’t be so different from the way that he has been living life. “I cannot bring myself to die,” he insists, “because I have not yet learned to live!” He resolves to put the pieces of his life together, to truly live in the last few months of his life. At first, he tries to reattach himself to his emotionally withdrawn son (Nobuo Kaneko ), who is only interested in collecting his father’s retirement money and buying a new house. Unsure where to turn next, Watanabe meets a sympathetic but worldly novelist ( Yûnosuke Itô ) in a bar, who is fascinated by the dying man’s story and vows to be his “Mephistopheles,” showing him the life of greed, drinking, gambling, and depravity. This has the opposite effect than what both men wanted—Watanabe is only horrified at this reckless lifestyle, and the novelist walks away ashamed that he has nothing to offer the dying man. Watanabe is close to giving up when he at last meets a young woman named Toyo (Miki Odagiri), a former employee of his department who quit the office job because it was “too boring.” They develop a sort of granddaughter/grandfather bond, and through his interactions with her, Watanabe finally realizes that the only way that he will find meaning in his life is if he lives his last days in service to others. And he thinks he knows just how to do so… The third part of this story takes place five months later, the day following Watanabe’s death. His co-workers and family sit together, get drunk, and put the pieces together of the sudden change that took place in the old man in the last few months of his life. I will not reveal fully what Watanabe accomplished in his final days, or how, but I will disclose that we see him several times in flashbacks as several characters tell their stories of his bizarre, almost maddeningly passionate behavior. If you are afraid that I have given away too much already, never fear. As I noted, no words on the plot details could ever fully give justice to the stirring emotional revelations that Ikiru delivers. I first viewed the film cold-turkey, having no idea of its plotline, but it is not a film about its plot. It is a film about Watanabe, a film about the two times in his dying life that he is moved to sing “Life is Brief,” and about the difference that he makes, both in himself and to those around him, in between these two moments. Nothing I reveal could disclose Watanabe’s journey—it is something embedded in the heart of the audience that can possibly be interpreted but never fully explained or spoiled. Much of this has to do with Takashi Shimura as Watanabe. This is, frankly, one of the greatest screen performances of all time. Shimura was only in his forties when he made the film, but his ability to shuffle and droop like an elderly man is truly uncanny, and it is heartbreakingly effective. Watanabe spends most his time with his head low, his shoulders hunched, and his eyes wide, as if the stomach cancer is simply an extreme cause of a bitterness and boredom that was eating him away all along. He stumbles with his words and fidgets with his hands, and these subtle movements are enough to make us understand exactly that he is thinking, and why. Watanabe drives himself increasingly mad with obsession as he works to complete his goal of finding purpose in life, and his movements and characterizations do not deviate, but somehow, Shimura is able to convey a gradual change in the dying man. The change is certainly difficult to pinpoint, but it remains apparent and finally reaches its climax in the end, when Watanabe at last finds a fulfilling reason to live and is therefore able to embrace the thought of death. Kurosawa directed Ikiru with a curious emphasis on film-noir. Consider Watanabe’s first scene with the novelist, in which Kurosawa uses the mise en scene to nearly block the dying man out of the frame, the fascinated face of the novelist cowering over him and the screen like a dark tempter. Throughout the film, the director uses a sharp contrast between light and dark, with dark being the clear victor (similar to his work in Rashomon). This creates an archetypal, almost nihilistic mood throughout the picture. Ironically, the point of film-noir is that there are no heroes, though Ikiru seems to be saying the opposite. On the other hand, Watanabe’s motivation cannot be discounted: It has literally taken imminent death to rally him to find true meaning in life. Roger Ebert notes of Watanabe, “ The older I get, the less [he] seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every one of us.” I think that this is exactly Kurosawa’s point. We’re all selfish, all unmotivated, all simply existing in comfort and nothing more. The only heroes are those who can emerge from this mentality, and often, the only way this can be accomplished is by recognizing the authenticity and immediacy of death. Otherwise, selfishness and greed will always prevail. Some have interpreted this film as Kurosawa’s expose on post World War II Japan, as it demonstrates some social problems in the country’s hierarchy. I would grant this reading, but I was also caution the viewer not to limit himself to this mentality. Ikiru is an expose on the quality of any life, from any country, from any era. Watanabe does not represent a 1950s Japanese social trap, but a trap that every human being must face: Comfort vs. Fulfillment, Selflessness vs. Greed, Living vs. Dying. The final point of Ikiru, tragically, seems to be that stomach cancer could do us all some good. Of this, I have no doubt. In the meantime, let me be as frank with you as possible: If a better or more important film than Ikiru exists, I am currently not aware of it. Cast: A Toho Pictures release. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Written by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni. No M.P.A.A. rating, but fine for the whole family (though the Criterion Collection DVD contains a few jolting worlds of profanity in the subtitles that is possibly not acceptable for children under 13). Running time: 143 minutes. Original Japanese theatrical release date: October 9, 1952. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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