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Ikiru

Written by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Japan, 1952

Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru is the type of movie that can change a life, or at least change a person’s way of looking at life. It is an extremely moving work, standing as a superb example of the emotional and inspirational power of cinema.

Ikiru is also an exceptional vehicle for Takashi Shimura, an actor known for his astonishing range over the course of 200-plus films. In Ikiru, while Kurosawa makes great use of faces in close-up throughout, there is none more expressive than that of Shimura as the cancer-ridden Public Affairs Section Chief Kanji Watanabe. Every emotion and every thought is transparently written on his aged and weary face—it’s hard to believe the actor would embody the vigorous leader of the rag-tag samurai team two years later in Seven Samurai. Here,...

Ikiru

Written by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Japan, 1952

Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru is the type of movie that can change a life, or at least change a person’s way of looking at life. It is an extremely moving work, standing as a superb example of the emotional and inspirational power of cinema.

Ikiru is also an exceptional vehicle for Takashi Shimura, an actor known for his astonishing range over the course of 200-plus films. In Ikiru, while Kurosawa makes great use of faces in close-up throughout, there is none more expressive than that of Shimura as the cancer-ridden Public Affairs Section Chief Kanji Watanabe. Every emotion and every thought is transparently written on his aged and weary face—it’s hard to believe the actor would embody the vigorous leader of the rag-tag samurai team two years later in Seven Samurai. Here,...

In six decades of filmmaking and thirty plus titles in his filmography, it’s nearly impossible to determine the weighted importance concerning a number of the influential works from Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa, considered by many to be among the most notable directors from Japan, alongside peers such as Mizoguchi and Ozu. Instead, it’s easier to discuss his work in strategic measures regarding theme or motif, such as his famed Shakespearean adaptations or epic Samurai classics, pillaged endlessly by Western filmmakers in proceeding generations. But certainly a definite standout is his 1952 title, Ikiru, which roughly translates as “to live.” A powerfully humanistic title examining the significance of life as something only to be rightly cherished when seen through the lens of death, it stands at the slender end of a filmography generally examining human tendency for apathy, revenge, and other plateaus of self-destructive forces. Moving without being sentimental, Kurosawa...

Akira Kurosawa goes full tilt humanist with this emotionally wrenching, vastly insightful look at human nature. A faceless bureaucrat, alone and empty, is diagnosed with stomach cancer. He rebels and breaks down, but then finds a way to give meaning to his life even as he's losing it. Kurosawa one-ups the Italian Neorealists by seeing hope and value even in the oblivion of the human condition. Ikiru Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 221 1952 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 143 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / To Live / Street Date November 24, 2015 / 39.95 Starring Takashi Shimura, Shinichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki, Miki Odagiri, Bokuzen Hidari Cinematography Asakazu Nakai Production Designer So Matsuyama Original Music Fumio Hayasaka Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni Produced by Sojiro Motoki Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Criterion has made slow but steady progress upgrading its impressive Akira Kurosawa library from DVD to Blu-ray. The newest...