I’ve never really been much of a film buff. As a kid I loved nothing more than going to the theater to watch new releases, but that enthusiasm rarely extended to seeking out older films or looking outside of my fantasy/science fiction shell. As I moved into adulthood and developed an increasing interest in the longform storytelling of television, my interest in movies continued to wane. My film-watching reached a nadir over the last few years, during which I watched probably no more than five or six films a year. Recently, however, a life change has left me with a bit more free time than usual and I’ve decided to use it to both watch more movies in general and to finally fill some of the many gaps in my film knowledge. One of the largest of those gaps is Akira Kurosawa.

I’m guessing most of you reading this have heard Kurosawa’s name, even if you haven’t seen any of his works. Akira Kurosawa is a titan of 20^th century Japanese film, whose influence and the techniques he perfected have spread far beyond his home country. The first time I ever heard about him, for just one small anecdotal example, was when I saw the classic X-Files episode ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’ referred to as a “Rashomon episode”. Ingmar Bergman, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Wes Anderson, to name a few, have mentioned Kurosawa as one of their inspirations. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has even said in interviews that the subject of this column was a major inspiration for Walter White.

Kurosawa directed around 30 films over the course of his career, several of which are frequently considered among the best films ever made. This initially made it daunting to figure out where to start, but it was ultimately a small thing that helped me make my decision – the DVD cover of Ikiru (which I believe might also be one of the movie posters). There was something so haunting and lonely about the image, of a man sitting on a swing set in the midst of falling snow, the sky pitch black behind him. And yet the man’s expression almost seems to be one of contentment. It immediately caught my attention. I wanted to know more. So I watched it, and I loved it. It was perhaps the most a film has moved me in a long time.

Some spoilers for Ikiru ahead.

Ikiru (which translates to ‘To Live’) is the story of Kanji Watanabe, an aging, mild-mannered bureaucrat who (according the helpful narrator) has been working in the Public Affairs office of his city’s government for thirty years and is currently the Section Chief. His job, which has consumed nearly his whole attention for the past few decades, is dull (consisting entirely of stamping and shuffling papers), and his relationship with his son and daughter-in-law is strained to say the least. It’s been an unfulfilling life, something Watanabe only realizes when he receives a diagnosis of terminal stomach cancer. Not wanting to die with his life in the state that it is, he sets out on a personal journey to find meaning.

There are a whole host of reasons why, in my opinion, Ikiru is a great film that has stood the test of time, far more than I would be able to do justice to here. That is why I have decided to focus on just two, the first of which is the fantastic lead performance by Takashi Shimura as Watanabe. Watanabe as a character is not a very talkative person and when he does speak it is often in a barely audible mumble. It is Shimura’s excellent use of body language and facial expression that really helps to get Watanabe’s personality across to the viewer. His hunched posture, his sometimes halting and awkward movements, the way he frequently looks away and avoids eye contact during conversations – it all goes a long way toward selling us on how worn down and lost Watanabe has become during the first half of the film. Even then, though, there is an intensity to Shimura’s performance that is hard to miss. We see it in the way he stares in abject horror when he realizes what the doctor is about to say. Perhaps the best example occurs when Watanabe visits a nightclub after a night of drinking and gambling with a well-intentioned novelist. Watanabe requests that the pianist play a ballad from his youth, “Gondola no Uta”, and then, much to the surprise of the other attendees, he begins to sing along. The camera stays trained directly and up close on Watanabe’s face almost the entire time, and the way that we can see his emotions shift into deeper and deeper anguish over the course of the song is a true testament to Shimura’s acting ability. And then the way he lets that intensity come more and more to the forefront as Watanabe comes closer to finding purpose…it’s hard to describe much it affected me.

Another thing that I think is key to Ikiru working as well as it does is the film’s structure. The first two-thirds of the film are entirely from Watanabe’s perspective. We see the current state of his life, flashbacks that illustrate how everything ended up like this, and, of course, his travails with various side characters as he struggles to figure out how to make something of his life in his final months. The last third of the film skips ahead five months and takes place at his wake shortly after this death. Almost every major character from the first part of the film is present – with a couple important exceptions – and we watch as they argue and discuss with each other, complete with flashbacks of their own, as to why Watanabe had appeared to have a sudden change of heart five months ago and to what extent his accomplishments during that time can be attributed to him. There’s a great interplay between these two parts of the movie that serves to deepen its emotional impact. The first section gets us invested in Watanabe’s journey and allows us to see how hard he struggled and persevered to find peace with himself. This adds a lot of tension to the second section, as we see his life and actions trivialized and ignored by those who weren’t able to witness what the audience saw. This, in turn, makes it all the more satisfying when the attendees at the wake gradually put together the pieces and come to the realization of just how remarkable and inspiring Watanabe’s final months were. It’s a rather ingenious way of structuring the movie, one that took me by surprise and made Ikiru feel even more special.

Ultimately, Ikiru is a remarkable accomplishment by Kurosawa and everyone else involved. It’s an incredibly affecting film, somber and hopeful in equal measure, encapsulated by an image of a man singing on a swing set on a snowy night.

Header image courtesy of Coral Gables Cinema.