CANON OF FILM: "IKIRU"

IKIRU (1952)

 
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay:Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto & Hideo Oguni

 

An old man, Watanabe-san (Takashi Shimura), we are informed will die soon, unaware at the time, he has stomach cancer. He works as the Chief of Public Affairs at City Hall. His job is to stamp paper, and inform the public who comes to the department with a complaint, which department to go see about their complaint. In one amazing sequence, we see one such complaint go through dozens of sections of the government until it ends up back at the Public Affairs desk, which naturally sends the complaint over again. Eventually, to the surprise of everybody, especially his co-workers, he’s not in work one day. He’s in the hospital and he finds out about his illness and that he has less than a year to live. (Not from the Doctor curiously enough, which was actually customary in Japan not to inform people of terminal illnesses.) 

I've been thinking a lot about "Ikiru" lately. It's probably the Kurosawa movie that I think about the most in fact. Recently, when Sight & Sound completed their decennial Top Ten Poll of the Best Films of All-time, I decided to re-publish my own personal list, and I put "Ikiru" on it. I didn't give much of an explanation as to why, only that I thought I needed a Kurosawa and that "Rashomon" and "Ikiru" were tied for his best and I decided to switch them up this year. And that's true, they both hit different parts of my brain, when I'm more cerebral and intellectual in my thoughts, I tend to like "Rashomon" more, but I don't know, lately the emotional side has been much more dominant in my thoughts. Personally, death has been on my mind, or how fleeting and limited life is if I should be more specific. I'm not the only one though, it was remade recently into the British film "Living," from director Oliver Hermanus. That movie is incredibly powerful in it's own right and got two Oscar nominations, and personally I'm kinda surprised the film hasn't been remade more often. I think most people just would rather leave it be, not because it couldn't be translated to other cultures easily, in fact, it's an incredibly universal story, but they just don't want to think about the implications in the film. About how fleeting life is and how sudden it could end, and how suddenly you can be face-to-face with one's own end, what would we actually do if faced with that situation.

“Ikiru,” translates in Japanese to “To Live”. Watanabe-san hasn’t lived, and now he’s about to die. He tries to tell his son about his illness, but he’s too concerned about the father’s upcoming pension which he wants to use to get him and his wife a place of their own. He doesn’t tell them. He doesn’t tell his family, his co-workers, except for one, and the only other person he tells is a drunk novelist. (Yunosuke Ito) He has wasted his life pushing around paperwork and hasn’t done anything substantial with his life. The novelist, finding the notion romantic, decides to take the old man everywhere on the town that he can. Pachinko parlors, dance halls, even a strip club. Has he now lived? Does it make much difference? He still has the cancer, and he will still die, and the night doesn’t seem to have affected him much. 

Yet it has. So has the few nights out he spends with Toyo (Miki Odagiri) a young former co-worker for a few nights out, and he takes her to some of the same places, surprising the hell out of her, who has nicknamed the old man “The Mummy”. She nicknamed all his co-workers at the Public Affairs Department. There’s a lot of symbolism in the movie retaining the post-war Japanese culture, and everything from Tchaikovsky references to Buddhism, but most of that I only learned after listening to the DVD commentary. Not sure how I would’ve learned it any other way. Kurosawa’s films are probably the most western of all the older great Japanese filmmakers. Many of his Samurai films were remade as American Westerns, most notable “Seven Samurai,” which became “The Magnificent Seven”. His films range of influence range from Shakespeare (“Ran,” “Throne of Blood”) to American mystery/film noir. (“High and Low.”) Probably his best film is “Rashomon,” which is famous now for being the first film to have and be about multiple perspectives of the same event.

That said, I consider “Ikiru,” my favorite film of his. It’s not simply a movie about death and living, but of a single man, who’s faced with death and finally decides to live. This isn’t a melodramatic feel-good “Bucket List,” type movie that pretends it’s about the things “Ikiru,” is actually about, those people in those films are just, doing things, Watanabe-san is striving, making the decision to actually live life in the face of his mortality. When he returns to work, Watanabe picks up a complaint about mothers wanting a park in a dangerous area and begins putting in actual motion the park's approval. 

Curiously, the movie suddenly jumps to his funeral. It’s months later and we’re at a wake with a bunch of bureaucrats drinking around a photo of Watanabe. A park has been built, and the public thinks Watanabe, who apparently died in the park on a snowy night, hasn’t gotten credit for building it. The parks department designed it, the deputy mayor approved it, at first it seemed unfathomable to them to simply give him credit, they curmudgeon, and it’s true, a bunch of people were involved.

It is in this long sequence that takes up the rest of the movie through recall and flashback does it suddenly become clear what Kurosawa, and Watanabe was doing. 

I always thought that this was simply the best way to tell the rest of the story, to have it told back in flashback, with all their bureaucrats not realizing how insignificant their contributions are to the project they took so much credit for and love basking in the glow of their accomplishments, but it's not just that though. Once Watanabe-san decides to make the decision to build the park, his arc has ended, he has changed. He's made the decision to live life, and there's no need to keep seeing him pursue that in real time. It's better to see this through the eyes and mind of the bureaucrats’ selective memories beginning to fall apart, as they slowly realize several simple truths about their co-worker. Not only, that it was indeed him that got the park made, but also why he suddenly had such a change-of-heart and change-of-action, and his suddenly ballsy and changed behavior and dedication could be only be explained one way. That change of action is the key; the decision to live, and movie shows disturbingly, just how difficult that decision actually is to make. How we secretly wish more people would make that decision. How we wish we would make that decision.