Ikiru
Ikiru
Disclaimer: There is a spoiler in the second last paragraph(only a line), you may want to avoid it if you have not seen the movie.
Watnabe knows he will die. Soon. But, it is not death that scares the wits out of him. It is life. His life. A lifetime of wasted opportunity. A life of failed expectations would have been still better. His was a life of no expectations. A life wasted behind the pile of emotionless papers. He didn’t miss even a single day of his office in the work span of 29 years, 11 months. Stamp after stamp after stamp after stamp after stamp after stamp…
A life that carried out recursive functions, without any goal and purpose in sight. A life that associated no joy or sorrow with the rising sun, with the star studded night, with anything. A life that was so listless, that it was not even life at all. These things come rushing back to him, when he is diagonised with stomach cancer and he knows, he only has half a year or a year at maximum. To live.
Now, he desperately wants to cling on something. Anything. He doesn’t know how. He wants to decorate his life in all the ways he possibly can. The miser is ready to spend extravagantly his hard earned 50,000 yen, because he wants to enjoy. At any cost. He goes places for seeking that elusive thing, happiness. No matter how transient or superficial it may be. Places, he would have never even imagined going. Because, he hadn’t even given his life a chance before. He had closed the doors to happiness ages ago, and when now life is actually closing door on him, he wants to sneak through and live it. Live it all. Like never before.
He meets the girl from his office who is a bundle of exuberance, and exudes contagious joy. Watnabe is both envious and happy to see her. She is almost a reminder of youth Watnabe never had. She unconsciously leads Watnabe to discover himself, what he really wants to do the rest of his life. Of doing atleast one thing in his life he is proud of.
Kurosawa’s sensitive lens meets Hashimoto’s poignant story in this stunning movie. Such is Kurosawa’s brilliance that he doesn’t speak much, but even then he speaks volumes. I had merely heard about the art of silence, with Ikiru I have experienced it. Kurosawa’s brilliance is not only mind numbing, it is also heart warming in the same breath. Watnabe, hours before his death, is on a swing, with a smile on his lips. Livelier than ever before. The smile of a satisfied man. The satisfaction of having at least lived a live. The satisfaction of being able to provide something of value to others.
Because, that is what Ikiru is all about. It is not about death, it is not about questioning it’s inevitability. It is about life. It is about having a purpose, it is about keeping the flame alive in our hearts. It is about the skip in our walk, it is about still being a kid at heart. It is about embracing those little things that we so forget in our busy, daily lives. It is about having a dream, and then doing anything to fulfill it.
Below is the lyrics of the song(Gondola no Uta), that Watnabe sings during some of the scenes of the movie:
life is brief.
fall in love, maidens
before the crimson bloom
fades from your lips
before the tides of passion
cool within you,
for those of you
who know no tomorrow
Tags: Akira Kurosawa, death, Happiness., Life
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
After watching most of the Kurosawa movie, I learned something that for his movies Kurosawa always had a good story(except Dreams which was mystical). This is where most filmmaker fail. They have a good idea but not a great story to convey that idea. But you can also say that movie doesnot necessarily mean that it should have story. Some movies are mystical. Agreed. In all of the Kurosawa movie you will be totally engrossed in the story. And at the end Kurosawa will come close to your ear and will tell you the moral of the story. And generally it is not spoon feeding by Kurosawa. Same thing goes to Ikiru. You know what is going to happen but what Kurosawa tells you as a moral of this story tht may be entirely different of what you might have thought. I hope that people see all the Kurosawa movies. Not only was he a great director but a great story teller.
Thanks for sharing! One of my favourites! Not only because this is a Kurosawa movie but it is one of the finest performances by Shimura Takashi….
By the way, can anyone tell me where I can get DVD’s of Japanese classics in Mumbai?
Thx.
Thanks for letting me know of this write-up. Reminds me to pull up my sock for getting this movie. Its been in to-watch list for 6 months now. Kurosawa was a fine director and a magician sort when it came to showcasing even the commonplace kind of stuff.