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Life is so short
Fall in love, dear maiden
While your lips are still red
And before you are cold,
For there will be no tomorrow.
Sung in Japanese in a low voice with lips barely moving,
"The Gondola Song" from the 1920's highlights Akira
Kurosawa's Ikiru near
its midpoint. When the elderly protagonist Kanji Watanabe
softly sings the melancholy tune, the lively nightclub
pauses to listen, and tears begin to form around the
old man's eyes. (The same was happening to me--the
image is so strong that it returns with its musical
accompaniment)
Watanabe (Takashi Shimura, in his most outstanding career role that clearly demonstrates his ability to carry a film) knows he has stomach cancer and only a short time to live. But he doesn't know how to live it up, so he befriends a stranger, a writer played by Yunosuke Ito, and asks him to show him the "good life." After drinking far too much wine, they have arrived at the nightclub, and Watanabe has reached an overdue turning point in his life. What do you do when you have just six months to live--a question the secretive doctors ask each other, after telling Watanabe that he has a minor ulcer. (Japanese protocol at the time was to conceal the truth from terminal patients, believing that it would only make them suffer more)
He already knows the truth, revealed by another stranger in the waiting room who describes the familiar stomach cancer symptoms and relates how the doctors always cover it up with "ulcer diagnoses." The look of despair in Watanabe's face is priceless--;wordlessly he communicates the shock, hopelessness, and fear with his lowered eyes and body posture.Worst of all, he feels his life utterly useless--devoid of meaning. What has he done the past 30 years during his tenure as a bureaucrat at the Tokyo City Hall except rise to the head of his section, but all he does day after day is shift papers from one pile to the next, affixing his signature stamp on approved papers.
His wife has been dead for several years, and he conjures up warm memories of his son--playing little league baseball and entering surgery, two instances where he was able to be supportive when his son failed or was fearful. But now he realizes that his son thinks little more than about the future pension he'll receive from his father, and significantly asks his father to shut the door--closing off any hopes the elderly man has of re-connecting with his son.
So, in a sense the cancer saves him, giving him a chance at redemption--as Kurosawa states in the opening voiceover while images of an X-ray of the stomach cancer appear, Watanabe is just drifting through life and barely alive anyway. How many others are exactly like this--merely existing, nihilistically going from home to work through a dull existence? Kurosawa's everyman touches make Ikiru one of the most poignant films of the century.
It's only through reaching out to strangers that the old man begins to live again. The half-drunken writer inspires him away from suicidal thoughts: "Cancer makes you positive to life. You used to be a slave--now you are a master." The vivacious young lady jokester, who once nicknamed the old man "the Mummy," makes him feel better. He thinks perhaps she holds the key to Life, and expresses this to her:
"... just to look at you makes me feel better. It warms this - this mummy's heart of mine. And you're so kind to me. No; that's not it. You're so young, so healthy. No; that's not it either... You're so full of life. And me... I'm jealous of that. If I could be like you for just one day before I died. I won't be able to die unless I can do that."
She suspects that something is wrong with him--a lecher, perhaps? So she soon dismisses his offers to dinner. Watanabe desperately wants to do something to make his life meaningful, but what can he do? He has been a lifelong bureaucrat, and it is within that domain that he sees a chance for redemption.
Without preaching, Kurosawa
plainly teaches lessons. He does so with dry humor,
evident with the Black neighborhood group of citizens
who come to the city hall to ask for trash removal
and request approval for a small urban park for their
children. Classic Japanese bureaucracy comes into
play (very much like the failed democracy of its American
counterpart)--the people are sent from department
to department: Parks, Hygiene, Health, Environment,
Insects, Pipes, City Planning, Roads, Education, and
to the City Council. Each department claims that its
hands are tied and refers the group to another department
in ceaseless red tape. Can anyone make such an efficient
system work on a project, when each department is
determines to do nothing but shift papers and responsibilities
elsewhere? One cinematic coup are the mounds bundled
papers stacked even higher than the people working
in the office, and often used as framing devices.
Using a similar flashback technique also found in
Rashomon, Kurosawa
has witnesses describe Watanabe's "strange" behavior
the last few weeks of his life. Rumors unfold at the
memorial, where co-workers and son speculate whether
or not he knew of his cancer or whether he was having
an affair with a young girl. The mystery is solved
through another stranger, a policeman, who tearfully
relates a moving scene--one that Kurosawa magically
frames with a jungle gym and slow tracking shot through
a light snowfall to reveal a very happy old man in
a swing, singing in a low, rumbling voice:
Life is so short
Fall in love, dear maiden
While your lips are still red
And before your passion cools,
For there will be no tomorrow.
Typically understated, Kurosawa goes straight
to the heart and speaks to the souls of everyone who
views Ikiru. Best known
for his samurai warriors and sweeping landscapes,
Kurosawa paints
this intimate film with black and white scenes that
relate to everyone, asking the same questions that
plague us all and offering a solution that is universally
attainable.
Note: The Criterion Collection has come through with
another indispensable two disk set on this long overdue
Kurosawa classic.
Along with the impeccable transfer is a thorough analytical
commentary by Stephen Prince (author of The
Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa)
that does a fine job pointing out acting nuances and
structural composition, and two revealing documentaries.
Kurosawa's
philosophy and methods of filmmaking are detailed
on the 90-minute documentary A Message
from Akira Kurosawa (2000) that features
numerous interviews from the legendary director on
the set of Rhapsody
in August. Spectacularly enriching
the DVD release is a wonderful 41-minute documentary
on the making of the film from the Akira
Kurosawa: To Create is Beautiful series.
Not only do we see and hear Kurosawa
discuss aspects of Ikiru
and see glimpses of his famous storyboards, but gain
greater appreciation of Takasi Shimura's incredible
acting ability and devotion to the project from the
people who worked with him. Shimura interview clips
are also included, but the real delight is a modern
day interview session with actress Miki Odagiri. Still
exuding the same vivaciousness and enthusiastic lust
for life she does in the film, Odagiri seems far younger
than her 70+ years.
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