Rarely does one have the good fortune to experience a legitimate masterpiece of world cinema, but that is indeed an apt description for Kurosawa Akira’s Ikiru (1952). An example of gendai-geki (films that work within contemporary settings) and known usually by its Japanese title rather than the English translation (“To Live”), Ikiru is the tale of a Japanese public servant, Watanabe Kanji (Shimura Takashi), who finds out that he has terminal stomach cancer. This prompts Watanabe to completely re-examine his life – a life in which he has spent thirty years working in the same government office, with little to show for it in terms of accomplishment or happiness. The bureaucracy in which Watanabe works is almost comically labyrinthine. One memorable sequence from early in the film shows a group of citizens trying to enlist municipal help to create a park in their community. Each city office they approach refuses to help and shucks the responsibility off to another department: the Parks Department sends them to the Health Department, which recommends they see the Sanitation Department, who pass the buck on to the Environmental Sanitation Department, and so on. Watanabe’s family life is similarly dysfunctional, as his wife has died and his son Mitsuo (Kaneko Nobuo) and daughter-in-law Kazue (Seki Kyôko) are primarily concerned with getting their hands on Watanabe’s retirement bonus. It is a trip to the doctor’s office that finally prompts Watanabe to set a different course; he decides to truly embrace life before his time expires. In his final months, Watanabe toils to leave behind an appropriate and meaningful legacy, and at the wake following Watanabe’s inevitable death his friends and co-workers gather to evaluate Watanabe’s inspirational reversal.
Ikiru’s strength lies in its exploration of two related themes: the value of living a life with purpose, and the distracting and dehumanizing trappings of modernity. In the film, the problems associated with modernity are manifested in both the byzantine local government and the consumerism that dominates the concerns of Watanabe’s son and daughter-in-law. At the beginning of the film, a narrator accurately sums up Watanabe’s existence by saying that “he’s simply passing the time without living his life. In other words, he’s not even really alive.” In thirty years, Watanabe hasn’t made any significant contribution to society, and those in positions of power, such as the town’s deputy mayor, are only willing to help others if it is the politically expedient thing to do. Watanabe’s son and daughter-in-law are similarly self-centred; they wear Western clothes, listen to Western music, complain about traditional Japanese houses, and conspire to use Watanabe’s pension in order to make a down payment on a modern home. Kurosawa’s film is subtle, however, in that their predilection towards modern and Western surroundings is not inherently bad, but rather is symptomatic of their greed and their abandonment of purposeful lives. Soon after learning of his terminal illness, Watanabe meets a young writer and himself dabbles in youthful and West-inspired culture. While this is a departure from Watanabe’s regimented former life, drinking and witnessing a striptease winds up being no more fulfilling because it remains bereft of tangible purpose.
A major turning point occurs the following morning, as Watanabe runs into a young woman, Odagiri Toya (Odagiri Miki), who used to work with him at the government office. Watanabe discovers that she has quit her job in order to pursue a new career, one that will allow her to contribute to the greater good: she helps to make wind-up toy bunnies for children. Immediately, she becomes a model of sorts for the new Watanabe Kanji; in a scant few months, she’s discovered the dehumanizing nature of bureaucratic work, which it took Watanabe thirty years and a terminal illness to discover for himself. As Watanabe works to improve himself and leave behind a meaningful legacy, Kurosawa’s mise-en-sc ène and camerawork cunningly mirror the changes in the character. Whereas early in the film static and more dimly-lit shots were the norm, the film’s cinematography takes a turn towards the beautiful, inventive, and spectacular. In place of dreary office settings are exterior locations (a brightly lit street, or a playground on a snowy evening), Kurosawa introduces far more extravagant camerawork and editing techniques, including a long crane shot as Watanabe and his writer friend enter a bar, a montage sequence as Watanabe and Toya enjoy themselves ice skating and going to the movies, and a gorgeous shot through a jungle gym as Watanabe rides on a children’s swingset. As with his previous film Rashômon (1950), Kurosawa also cagily manipulates the film’s narrative structure for thematic effect. Ikiru’s near fifty-minute epilogue shifts perspective from an omniscient point-of-view to a flashback-heavy profile of Watanabe’s final few months, as seen through the memories of the mourners at his wake. In short, the focus of the film shifts to the issue of legacy, and to the people whose lives were impacted by Watanabe’s good deeds.
While Ikiru’s life-affirming message is clear, it is to Kurosawa’s great credit that it doesn’t devolve into unrealistic schlock. While Watanabe is able to make major improvements in his life, some of his co-workers are unable to do the same, even after they spend time reflecting on Watanabe’s life (and death). Towards the end of the film, one co-worker returns to his meaningless bureaucratic life instead of taking positive action, his face becoming hidden from the camera behind a tower of paperwork. That, in summation, is Kurosawa’s brilliance: Ikiru is inspirational without being didactic, cinematically complex without distracting from its narrative nuance, and optimistic while tacking a potentially depressing subject. While Kurosawa may be better known to the general public for his samurai films, it is Ikiru that may well be his greatest legacy, the gift of a truly purposeful life.