Movie Critique – Ikiru

Ikiru, translated “To Reside”, is the masterpiece of the terrific Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa. It is very various from the Samurai films for which he is most well known in the West, but it is unquestionably just one of the best movies at any time fully commited to celluloid.

The film, manufactured in 1952, tells the story of Kanji Watanabe (Takeshi Shimura), a civil servant who, as the movie starts, discovers that he has abdomen most cancers, and only 6 months to dwell. His life has been defined by his occupation, 1 of soul-sucking monotony and inefficient forms. Kurosawa demonstrates just how ineffective this paperwork is by an amusing scene early in the film, where a team of women petition the division of public affairs to clean up a stagnant pool in their neighborhood. They are shunted from public affairs to engineering, and then even further up the forms, until eventually, at some point, they stop up back again where they started, acquiring accomplished very little.

The plight of these females in a lot of approaches parallels the everyday living of Mr. Watanabe, who has devoted himself completely to the bureaucracy. Without a doubt, he has not missed a single day of operate in almost 30 decades, and still, he realizes, he far too has accomplished very little. Watanabe’s son is ungrateful of the sacrifices his father has produced, though the movie factors out that the son in no way requested for them. Mr. Watanabe’s daily life is vacant and unfortunate, and it is only via the revelation that he is dying, that he is ready to actually stay for the to start with time.

He goes out for a evening on the town, with the aid of a curious stranger who is willing to help him learn to expend his funds. A younger girl co-worker, who requirements his seal so that she can resign, unknowingly helps him carry on his journey. Watanabe admires her zest for everyday living – just hunting at her “warms him up” – and he desires a lot more than everything to fully grasp how to are living as she does in advance of he dies.

Takeshi Shimura, a lengthy time Kurosawa collaborator supplies a nuanced and touching effectiveness as Watanabe, much eliminated from his most popular role as Kambei, in Seven Samurai. Indeed, Shimura is ready to correctly conveying not only the character’s bodily ache, but also his psychological suffering, and Mr. Watanabe’s changeover from damaged despair to a hopeful sense of reason is totally believable and engrossing.

As a single would be expecting from a master filmmaker these kinds of as Kurosawa, the movie is fantastically shot, and the storytelling is impeccable as the director deftly works by using a collection of flashbacks to tell his tale. The rate is incredibly deliberate and ponderous, but in no way boring.

Akira Kurosawa is definitely a single of the excellent directors in the background of cinema, and he designed quite a few a lot more movies all over his job. Quite a few of people films have been terrific in by themselves, but Ikiru, with its touching and poignant tale, and competent storytelling, is truly his masterpiece.