But if you've got these symptoms, you won't last a year:
First, if the pain is kind of heavy. Second, if you can't stop burping unpleasantly.
And your tongue's always dry. You can't get enough water and tea.
And then there's the diarrhea. And, if it isn't diarrhea, well, then you're constipated. Your bowel movements go black.
And then, that meat you used to love so, you can hardly touch it anymore. And whatever you eat, you vomit half an hour later.
And when stuff you ate last week comes up when you vomit, well, then you're done for.
You've hardly got three months...
The first shot in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952) is a blurry x-ray.
A narrator steps up:
This stomach belongs to the protagonist of our story. At this point, our protagonist has no idea he has this cancer.
(Turn on subtitles)
Cinematic narrators often signalling laziness, a lack of confidence —or talent — on the filmmaker's part: Show, don't tell, remember?
But in Ikiru, narration is required: our main character, Mr. Watanabe — the stooped, blank faced public affairs section chief at Tokyo City Hall — is so hollow, he needs some introduction.
Ironically, his hollowness has been reduced somewhat by these growing fatal tumors, the only "lively" new things to come into his life in decades.
The narrator continues:
In fact, this man has been dead for more than 20 years now. He's been worn down completely by the minutia of the bureaucratic machine and the meaningless busyness it breeds.
As Watanabe sits in a doctor's waiting room, he's cornered by a chatty know-it-all who we sense spends a lot of time in these antechambers. He points out another denizen to Watanabe:
That man over there... His doctor told him he's got an ulcer, but trust me, it's stomach cancer. And stomach cancer is practically a death sentence.
The doc usually says it's just a mild ulcer, and that there's no real need to operate. And that you can eat whatever you want as long as it's easy to digest. If that's what he tells you, you've got a year, at most.
Watanabe's doctor gives him that very diagnosis. He's crushed, in shock. His life is over, but also realizes that it really has been "over" for a long time, at least since the death of his wife when his only son was just small. The now grown son and his wife share Watanabe's house, but they are otherwise estranged from the old man. He doesn't tell them what he's learned.
Breaking with his rigid routine, Watanabe goes out drinking and tells a stranger about his condition instead. This rakish writer appoints himself Watanabe's guide through the Tokyo underground of Western style bars and clubs, aiming to teach him how to live for once. But this shabby night on the town leaves Watanabe feeling just as defeated. Their amusements create a vacuum rather than fill it. He can't even enjoy the expensive sake he's splurged on; his stomach can no longer take it.
Watanabe does decide to skip work for the first time in his career, though, pretending to go to the office while aimlessly wandering the city. He bumps into the only bright spark among his fellow office mates, a simple, lively young woman named Toyo who needs his station chief stamp on her resignation papers. Unaware of his condition, she explains that she doesn't want to waste another day at her pointless job. Watanabe becomes obsessed with her, but his interest is hardly romantic: He's mesmerized by her energy and humor, admires her spirit, and wants her "secret" to rub off on him.
This happens, but in an unexpected, roundabout way: Days later, Toyo tells him she loves her new job at the toy factory. Pulling a mechanical bunny out of her purse and setting it hopping across the table, she asks him, "Why don't you try making something too?"
From the start of the film, local mothers have been unsuccessfully campaigning City Hall to have a fetid cesspool turned into a playground. We watch them get directed to different departments, including Watanabe's, being rebuffed at each one.
He has wasted his life at work, but play proved no more meaningful. What if Watanabe can use his work to create play, but for others? He dedicates his final weeks of life to cutting through the bureaucratic clog, clearing the cesspool and putting swings and slides in its place.
None of this happens on screen, though. In a harsh cut, we see Watanabe's photograph on a shrine. "Five months later," our narrator comes back to say, "our protagonist is dead."
We're now at his wake, where incrementally, as drink displaces decorum, family and colleagues try to make sense of Watanabe's curious legacy. What possessed him to single-handedly steer — or more accurately, bully — this little project to completion, at one point even staring down the crime gang that wanted to put up a red light district on the site? It was so unlike him.
One by one, his coworkers remember (or misremember, this isn't clear) his determination, even as his body was failing, to serve the local people for once, his supposed vocation all along.
The sake kicks in. "Let us never forget the spirit of Watanabe," shouts one man. "Let us never forget how we feel at this moment!" All vow to return to City Hall the next day and devote their lives to imitating their late friend's generosity of spirit.
But this is a Kurosawa film, not a Hallmark movie. These men don't realize that it was only because Watanabe was suffering that he was inspired to do what he did, and their morning-after hangovers don't rate. Another's good example will only carry any of us so far. Unless and until they suffer as their friend did, their hearts will probably never change.
Roger Ebert echoes many others when he says that Ikiru "is one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently." But for the reasons above, I can't agree, as much as I'd like to.
That completely contradicts the filmmaker's explicit message at the conclusion, for one thing. For another, it flies in the face of human nature itself, and Kurosawa was a clear-eyed humanist. Like the Russian novelists who so inspired him, he knew that life has no cure.
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22 Member Comments
Hi, Kathy:
You note that "Cinematic narrators often signal laziness, a lack of confidence —or talent — on the filmmaker's part: Show, don't tell, remember?" Yes, I quite agree. Subtitles that explain the story line or thoughts of the characters is another usually lazy, talentless way to move the story along. But maybe the worst cinematic "shortcut" is the musical interlude, where the protagonist is shown thinking while some song is being played in the background. That trend started somewhere in the 70s I believe..
Great, thoughtful review. I am now inspired to check out Ikiru.
Thank you and best wishes.
Kathy, Thank you for giving serious consideration to older films. Always a treat to see your byline once again.
In the spirit of "show, don't tell" I found the recent Netflix offering of "Prospect" to be a compelling and unique gem.
Kathy, thank you for this review in your usual manner - interesting and thoughtful. I look forward to watching the film. There is a short story by Gogol that might intrigue you and other members: The Cloak. It contains some of the same themes as Ikiru, skillfully expressed. Be forewarned that it is not a quick read! The meaning of "short story" meant something different before our collective attention span became so truncated.
Mark replies:
You can hear my version of The Cloak here, Barbara.
Ah, thank you Mark! An early Christmas present.
You are one brave woman, with the courage to enlighten us about films like this while living it yourself. Be strong. You are in our prayers.
The actor who plays Watanabe in Ikiru, Takashi Shimura, was also the leader of the Seven Samurai in that classic Kurosawa action drama that came out just two years later. Anyone who sees his dramatic performance as the physically defeated but spiritually triumphant bureaucrat in Ikiru should watch Seven Samurai and appreciate the contrast with his samurai character, who is the wily leader of the ragtag group of masterless samurai.
I lived in Japan for seven years, and it was still very common in the 1980s for the doctors and families to withhold the fact of a cancer diagnosis from the patient. In Japan, it has long been the custom for the intimate care of a person in a hospital to be assumed by members of his or her family, or someone employed by them directly. My Japanese grandmother had jobs caring for hospital patients whose families could not spare the time from their jobs.
1952 was the year that the US Occupation of Japan ended. Millions of people had died in mass fire bomb raids on Japanese cities during the spring and summer of 1945, and cities were leveled. My mother and her family survived the fire storm created by the napalm dropped from a 150 B-29s over Nagoya and managed to get to her aunt's silkworm farm in the mountains for the rest of the war. Millions of Japanese soldiers and sailors did not return home. Having homes, clothing and food was a struggle for the nation as it emerged from a suicidal military dictatorship. Living on borrowed time was a metaphor for much of Japanese society at the time. Creating a place for children, a place for hope in the future in the midst of suffering and the loss of spouses, parents, and family, was a heroic act for Watanabe-san.
My middle name is Takashi. Mr. Shimura resembles my Japanese grandfather, Sentaro Suzuki, who died of cancer in 1956. As a young man, he had served in the Japanese Army during World War I, when Japan was allied with Britain and the US in supporting the anti-Bolsheviks in Siberia. He used to take me riding on his bicycle when I was a baby.
Kathy, your movie reviews have been a revelation to me. My movie tastes are to indulge in simple entertainment, but with a large dose of humor or vengeance, say "Ghost Busters" or "High Plains Drifter", or perhaps justice despite the odds, as in "The Verdict". I suppose I prefer to be reaffirmed rather than challenged. I'm embarrassed to say that I would have dismissed many of the movies you have explained so well with hardly a second thought. But since the last movie I can recall loading on my DVD was "Happy Feet" for my grand kids when they were 3 or 4 years old, perhaps five years ago, my preferences are of little significance to the world at large. As my reading skills decline, I might fall back on the cinema. Knowing there is a deeper layer to be puzzled out, they might be just the thing.
Mark mentioned in today's Mark Steyn Show (Dec. 7) that you are experiencing some serious problems. I hope that you are dealing with this issue with your usual insight and candor. My best wishes for you. I'm sure that there are many fans of your column who join me in looking forward to your future columns.
Kathy - You've got a new fan. I'm pleased Mark gave you this forum. I was looking forward to the next Shaidle at the Cinema, and it didn't disappoint. I saw quite a few Toshirô Mifune "Samurai" movies when I lived in Manhattan (1946 to 1974). There was a theatre that showed at least a dozen of them and I loved them all. Some of them helped to shape my understanding of human nature. So I was pleased to see your selection this week was a Akira Kurosawa, which I knew nothing about.
I was and am captivated with anything that shows the human condition, as this certainly did. After watching all the videos you posted, I decided to look back at your previous postings, and lo and behold, another Kurosawa film.
Your two observations: 1) "These critics are projecting their own pedestrian world views." AND 2) "It's clear to any unbiased viewer that Kurosawa isn't pushing "social justice" but presenting life as it is, a realm of corruption, heroism, brilliance, stupidity, and swift, cruel reversals of fortune," both spoke to me. So many on the far Left continually "project their world view" on all of us, and Kurosawa did have the genius to truly describe human nature.
Thank you for both films. It may have also motivated me to buy the audio version of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot."
Kathy,
Great article. Thank you!
I can't comment directly on the film because I've never seen it, but the subject of the movie is immensely important to me. I think about it all the time. The subject seems to me to be that most people do not realize that their identity and purpose are entirely a product of what they believe. What we do and how we do it is driven by belief, but they are not the thing itself. Most people don't realize, as well, that their beliefs also necessarily form a system. Ardent evolutionists and secularists think they are free of religion. They could not be more mistaken. What we believe also congeals to a purer systematic form over time and it's consequences become more obvious.
Oddly the two people I immediately thought of reading this were Bartleby the scrivener and John Profumo. Both of these men found it necessary to distill what they believed to it's essence and never again digress from it. The fictional Bartleby represented an odd distillation but he knew who he was and was satisfied with it.
I also thought of a yoke of oxen. They may have plowed a field for years producing tons of essential crops, but they never think of it's value or what any of it means. They may take a certain comfort in the predictable regularity of their lives, but none of it has anything to do with belief, only the satisfaction of their desires. They are not human.
Mr. Watanabe probably had the tenets of his belief system shattered by WWII. Rather than laboring to rebuild a belief system, he numbs himself in the predictable life of the ox. But he is human and this isn't human. He must recapture a system of belief or all is a void. But, for him, the hour is tragically too late.
I sometimes think of the COEXIST bumper sticker people. They all seem to be of a leftist orientation. They don't understand the absurdity of their position. They don't understand that they are merely occupying a point on a narrative trajectory that will eventually lead to distilled leftism. The COEXIST will then no longer exist. Very few people are willing to put in the work it takes to understand or even recognize the nature their belief system and what it's implications and consequences are. Does Mr. Kurosawa actually know what being a "humanist" means? Maybe most people aren't even capable of this and must have it spelled out for them by others. Our whole culture is in this immense crisis of belief right now. There are billions of Mr. Watanabes in the world. How will each resolve their personal crisis?
Very thoughtful post Todd.
You have not wasted your time thinking about this subject "all the time.". Our belief system is a key influence on what kind of citizen, spouse, parent, friend etc. we'll be.
It's a complex subject which are the kinds of subjects the great Kathy Shaidle often prefers to write about.
Todd, I would add one thing to your notion of "belief", and that is the unconscious embrace of implicit assumptions that support the belief. For example, the base of almost all "social justice" actions and goals is a very simplistic assumption that wealth, or at least access to goods and services, are the key to a meaningful life. Given such an assumption, poverty is "solved" by giving poor people money, or an EBT card, and it leads to a corollary, the rich gained their wealth by taking it from the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth, but these beliefs are buttressed by observation, poor people have little, while the wealthy flaunt their prosperity. Given that material wealth is all that matters, then reparations and redistribution are an obvious solution.
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he will feed himself as long as he wants. And the fisherman will gain a sense of accomplishment and self respect. This sort of truth should be a source of cognitive dissonance for SJWs, but it isn't. The need to believe in something is too great. Better to burn down a city and defund the police than confront the vacuum that underlies socialism's social justice.
I'm not sure how much of a distinction I would make between assumptions and belief. Maybe assumptions are a sub-class of belief that can be more easily refuted by facts in a reasoned argument. We would like to be able to disabuse people of false assumptions, but it is hard to do because they may actually "believe" whatever it is. Maybe assumptions are the things that can be solidified or modified by experience until they become fully formed beliefs.
As a personal example, I believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, inerrant, and authoritative. Believing that allows and enables me to study it in depth and have it open the whole world to me. Otherwise, it would be inscrutable and almost gibberish. I knew from the moment of my conversion that if this were not true I had nothing. I was only left then with my own opinions and imaginings. Not sufficient to hang one's soul on.
As one element of what I mean, consider capitalism. True capitalism "I believe" is entirely based on "thou shalt not steal". Every element of true capitalism must respect this. This is modified by the spiritual requirement to be generous. So I don't "believe" in capitalism per se, but I can plainly see and "assume" that it represents a biblical economic mandate. I hope this makes the distinction I am trying to make clear.
Maybe the bottom line then is that belief must be something that is worth your life. If it is less than that, it is merely an assumption.
Speaking as a Catholic (always practicing, never perfect), I honor the "yoke of oxen" much more than many, many humans. Also, not sure I can read their minds, but good to know they are content.
Thanks Kathy for bringing this beautiful film to mind.
I can testify that in Japan 30 years ago, roughly half the time back to Ikiru, one did not mention cancer "Gan" in front of the children.
This strict reticence was no longer the case in the West by that time, but a couple of generations before something similar obtained. You couldn't easily discuss breast cancer. In some places the word "cancer" was virtually unprintable -- as indeed was "breast".
Best wishes,
WL
Thankyou.
At the beginning of the lockdown terror, my wife and I decided to watch every Kurosawa movie (we have them all on DVD) in order. Watching some of them was work ("shigoto"). Sometimes I felt that Kurosawa could have saved a lot of film stock by cutting to the chase, especially with his later stuff like Kagemusha. Ran (King Lear) and Throne of Blood (Macbeth) are good.
I found Ikuru interesting. Kurosawa did like his social melodramas - kind of like mixing early Coronation Street with Dr Finlay's Casebook. Red Beard looks at health from the doctor's perspective (Dr Simon Sparrow with a beard but no humor, played straight by James Robertson Justice).
From this one I took away a positive message - we can all leave our mark, if we try.
But most people are living their lives as if they were in a dress rehearsal. Watanabe realizes that it's a real, live Improv performance, just in time.
By the way, the Japanese healthcare system is very prone to not telling people the truth if the news is bad.
And that set with the fetid cesspool features in quite a few of his urban melodramas.
When I lived in Honolulu back in the 70's I used to watch 'Samurai Doctor' on the local Japanese language TV station. I couldn't understand a word but I did learn that there is no medical problem a sharp blade cannot fix.
Yes, you hit the mark when you said his movie won't change people because Kurasawa is a clear eyed "humanist". It is religion that gives meaning to one's life, something that humanism or the quest only for health and reproduction as biological mandates can never bring. It is said, life begins at fifty. Perhaps knowing there is less time ahead of you than behind focuses one on the important things, giving, creating, helping others, etc.(Faith, love and charity?) I hope with your personal battles, you have found what makes life worth living. Reading your works these last months I think you have.
By sheer coincidence, I watched this movie today. I think the message is that nothing changes from generation to generation. We largely waste our lives with busy work or riding the clock until the end of the work day, and then one day we wake up to realize that life is brief (like the signature song in the movie) and then it's over. Cue to the next generation or the next Section Supervisor, which repeats everything equally as dully as the predecessor.
I have a couple of notes. One, this movie was made within 10 years of WWII's end. I wonder if the message of life being grim is reflected in not having recovered from the bombings at the end of WWII and the overall defeat. It must have influenced the storytelling.
And on a more trivial note, two, when I was in college I read about another Japanese director Ozu's use of off-screen space. That technique I think of often only because it very noticeable hit me once while watching an Ozu movie at the Student Union Theater when a character walked off camera to get something from the kitchen and every person in my audience leaned to the right to see where the character had gone. I almost laughed out loud noticing how Americans are accustomed to always seeing all the action. In our movies if someone walks out a door, the next cut is of that person in the other room. I notice Kurosawa also uses that Ozu off-screen technique fleetingly in this film. Kurosawa mostly uses the Western technique of showing all the action on the screen. It made me think about the story-telling techniques from both cultures and Kurosawa's use of both. Mostly Kurosawa sticks to the Western technique on this one score. But what Kurosawa used that I read was very typical of Ozu was setting the camera at three feet off the floor. That's basically the height people are while kneeling, which is something the Japanese do that Western cultures don't do. During the last 45 minutes of this movie, the camera is almost always at that height. You'll notice it move up when the police officer enters. The second point is more my own interest in using film to tell a story and how cultures vary and borrow from each other. I'd take you down the path of arguing that I think Kurosawa actually uses the jump cut properly in this film to show you how jolting it is to realize life is ending, bad news is shocking, and that life can be discombobulating, but I am running out of room, and I don't think film techniques are as interesting to others as they are to me.
Elisa:
You grasp the language of film better than most professional film critics.
Most newspaper reviewers feel the need to review this week's Police Academy 5 (or their editor). Literary critics don't attempt to review every new Harlequin romance.
Film criticism remains an unrefined slag heap (as Kathy demonstrates every Saturday).
Slag Heap: my ex-wife's pet name for me.
Throughout Kathy's review, I kept wondering if this wasn't an Ozu movie, where the internal agony is not due to cancer, but reticence. But this isn't a swashbuckling samurai film. It's all hat, no katana.
Thanks, Eric, for the compliment. It's 30-years old and muddled now with my law degree, but I have an undergraduate degree in Radio, Television, and Film (a B.S. from UT at Austin). I have always loved movies and storytelling.
And, Josh, I am no expert on Ozu or Kurosawa, but this this movie does remind me quite a lot of Ozu themes, and the setting of the camera at the three-foot height certainly seems borrowed from Ozu. It does also have all the jerky or exaggerated movements of a Kurosawa film, so it is definitely his. This is an area I should study more. And I think I'd like it, so I may sit down to devote a little time to it.