Part of Akira Kurosawa: A Retrospective
Considered by some to be Kurosawa’s greatest achievement, IKIRU presents the director at his most compassionate — affirming life through an exploration of a man’s death. Takashi Shimura portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer forced to strip the veneer off his existence and find meaning in his final days. Told in two parts, IKIRU offers Watanabe’s quest in the present, and then through a series of flashbacks. The result is a multifaceted look at a life through a prism of perspectives, resulting in a full portrait of a man who lacked understanding from others while alive.
Roger Ebert closed his 1996 review with the following: “Over the years I have seen IKIRU every five years or so, and each time it has moved me, and made me think. And the older I get, the less Watanabe seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every one of us.”
“Were it the only film Kurosawa ever made, his name would be rightfully engraved on film history.” —Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice
“It avoids all the maudlin cliches and blind alleys of examining the ‘meaning of life,’ giving us instead a rare portrait of a man experiencing a genuine insight into what his wasted years have been leading to.” —Don Drucker, Chicago Reader
“With elements borrowed from CITIZEN KANE, TOKYO STORY, and RASHOMON, this acute study of middle-class morals and the return to normalcy in post-Bomb Japan is reportedly Steven Spielberg's favourite film…. It's one of those deceptively simple and simply gorgeous stories that belongs high on the list of films that should be seen by everyone, although at no time are you under any illusions that the artist involved is anything but a master.” —David Parkinson, Empire Magazine