Ikiru is a satirical telling of a story of the
post-diagnosis life of a bureaucrat with terminal stomach cancer. A widower for over 20 years, the protagonist
of the narrative, Watanabe Kanji, has been, as is narrated by voiceover, doing nothing for a least this long at his government
office in which he spends the better chunk of his days. Through the voiceover narrator, the director,
Akira Kurosawa, explicitly asks viewers to think about “what life is all
about”. This becomes the conflict in
Kanji’s tale, one he starts to wrestle with on the night of the day he finds
out his fate, in the following scene.
Shot 1: A still, medium, low-angle shot of Kanji from behind, climbing up the stairs that lead to his son Mitsuo's bedroom.
Kanji paws for the last time at the thought of telling Mitsuo about the cancer that has shaken his life, before finally retreating back down the stairs. In an earlier scene he waits up in Mitsuo's bedroom to tell him when he gets in, but he hears a conversation between Mitsuo and his wife upon their coming home that turns him off. The Japanese maple leaf on the wallpaper in the bottom left corner of the shot is symbolism, possibly, for Kanji's peace with this decision to keep quiet. The shot fades to black into:
Shot 2: A medium, low-angle shot of Kanji from behind in his bedroom; Kanji, in the center of the screen and in a bed robe, walks toward his closet doors. To his right are the wooden paneled doors of his room. To his left a light hangs from the ceiling.
The camera tilts down as Kanji walks, showing him straight on and slightly towards screen right. Now visible, to the right and towards the foreground, is an alarm clock on a nightstand. Kanji's bed mat and pillow are now visible to his left, under the hanging light. Kanji hangs his shirt and coat among other garments on the outside of his closet.
Kanji turns and the camera starts to pan to the left, revealing more of his bed, and some belongings of his on the floor before the bed.
Kanji kneels over his bed in the center of the screen.
Slowly, he rolls his pants out, folded once and flat on his bed mat, rolls some bedding out over his pants, and places his pillow at the head of his bed. He picks his pocket watch up off the floor and turns towards the camera.
The camera tilts up and pans to the right, following Kanji as he makes his way to his nightstand with his pocket watch in hand.
The camera tilts down at Kanji, who stares in melancholy thought as he slowly puts down his watch on the nightstand and picks up his alarm clock, which he starts to set.
Suddenly he throws the alarm clock to the floor and whimpers. The camera follows him as he crawls into his bed and throws his whole body under covers. Kurosawa cuts to:
Shot 3: A still, medium shot of the head of Kanji's bed. His hand grasps the covers at his head and is all that can be seen of Kanji. A cabinet that houses his late wife's photograph is in a niche in the background of the shot, to the right of a stack of books and below two certificates that hang above and outside the niche. Kanji continues to whimper as the shot, through an axial cut, fades to:
Shot 4: A still, medium shot of the two certificates. Kurosawa employs another axial cut to:
Shot 5: A close up of the certificate on screen left, which reads, "Certificate of Appreciation in Recognition of 25 years of Distinguished Service". Kanji's sobbing continues as the shot fades to black.
The shock and horror of Kanji's diagnosis sends him into
a crisis he experiences in stages. On the day that he learns of his fate, he comes down
from the decision to kill himself, he psyches himself out of sharing his
prognosis, and, in this scene, he decides he won't set his alarm to go to work
the next day for the first time in almost thirty years. Taking influence
from silent film cinema, this scene is an artful expression of the absurdity of
Kanji's tidy and regular life. In fact, Kanji's life is so tidy and
regular that he can't take it anymore. As told by the narrator at the
beginning of the film, Kanji has been as good as dead since he started working
for the government.
Ikiru isn't the only one of Kurosawa’s films that appears to be
influenced by silent film. In Roshomon
(1950), Kurosawa simplifies the set and creates long scenes without nondiegetic
sound, which give his work this quality. Kuroswa also uses wipe transitions, which,
too, are characteristic of silent cinema.
Some of Kurosawa's distinctive techniques, such as the axial cut used to zoom in on something, are present in Ikiru, but many of the techniques for which he goes on to be known, such as the use of a long lens camera and the use of multiple cameras at once, are not present in Ikiru.
A technique that seems to be unique to Ikiru is the use of music to explicitly reinforce what the film is about. Kanji sings "Gondola no Uta" in full twice in this film. "Life is brief", the song goes. 'Live before you can't any longer' is it's message.
Another characteristic of the director's films is the tendency of them not to obscure their substance
and meaning. The narrator at the
beginning of Ikiru, Kampei at the end of Seven Samurai (1954), and Kikori at the end
of Rashomon, all more or less state what the films they’re in are about. What symbolism there is in Kurosawa’s work is
simple to figure out or is outrightly explained. Kanji,
decided upon spending a chunk of his retirement, meets a novelist at a bar who
takes him out into the city (Tokyo), where his hat gets stolen. The writer suggests he buy a new one, telling
him it will go with his “new self”, and telling Ikiru’s viewers that that is
what the hat symbolizes. The self that
the writer has in mind though, one under his influence, is not the self that
Kanji ultimately becomes. After this
night of indulgence, Kanji is swept up by the company of Toyo, a young coworker
with a love of life and a ubiquitous laugh.
He becomes inspired by her to make something with the remaining time in
his life.
Another thing Kurosawa’s films have in common are Kurosawa’s
complex ideas about violence and destruction, and heroism. The ronin in Seven Samurai are certainly
heroes, but Kurosawa takes their conquest down a peg by bringing to light the fact
that victory doesn’t necessarily belong to the victors, but to those with
something worth defending. In Rashomon
he juxtaposes a slew of suspects of the rape of a woman and the murder of her
husband with an individual who saves the life of an abandoned baby, to make the
point that humanity isn’t good or bad and the decision to do good or bad comes
from individuals. In Ikiru, Kanji follows,
instead of the destructive and indulgent path of the writer he meets, the heroic
path to the aid of a construction project that turns a rotting cesspool into a
playground.
A theme unique to Ikiru is the question of what inspires
people to live and to be passionate about life.
Kanji dies in the playground he works to build. At his funeral, after a night of drinking,
the other government officials are able to see the value in the way Kanji lived
the last few months of his life, but back at their offices, they continue to accomplish
nothing. According to Kurosawa, a death
sentence isn’t the only catalyst for the kind of passion Kanji feels, because
Toyo is passionate too. So by not
changing the hearts of the other bureaucrats with Kanji’s story, Kurosawa gets
his audience that much more worked up.
Another theme Kurosawa presents that might be distinctive of Ikiru is anti-government. What is implicit in Kurosawa’s criticism of the uninspired
life of bureaucrats, who keep their positions by being as neutral as possible,
and by doing as little as possible, is a criticism of bureaucracy itself.
