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DVD Ikiru - Criterion Collection
Blessed with timeless humanity, grace, and heartbreaking compassion, Ikiru is one of the most moving dramas in the history of film. Legendary director Akira Kurosawa is best remembered for his samurai epics, but this contemporary masterpiece ranks among his greatest achievements, matched in every respect by the finest performance of Takashi Shimura's celebrated career. Shimura, who nobly led the Seven Samurai two years later, is sublimely perfect as a melancholy civil servant who, upon learning that he has terminal cancer, realizes he has nothing to show for his dreary, unsatisfying life. He seeks solace in nightlife and family, to no avail, until a simple inspiration leads him to a final, enduring act of public generosity. Expressing his own thoughts about death and the universal desire for a meaningful existence, Kurosawa infuses this drama with social conscience and deep, personal conviction, arriving at a conclusion that is emotionally overwhelming and simply unforgettable. --Jeff Shannon
At Ikiru's opening, I started to have real doubts about the film. I had heard that this was Kurosawa's best, and the film was built up just enough to come crashing down.
Luckily, that didn't happen.
The narrator of the film reminded me of Criswell's narrations to Plan 9 from Outer Space. The film seemed to say too much and show too little. Then as the narrator continued during an extremely long take of our hero Mr. Watanabe at work, something clicked. The long duration of the shot and the narrator's continued breakdown of the man's less wholesome characteristics gave the impression that he was breaking down our lives, that the narration is coming from the back of our own minds, and that we are powerless to silence it.
That floored me, and for the rest of the film, I remained awe-stricken by this humble yet miserable man. Takashi Shimura gives one of the greatest performances I've seen since Raging Bull. Here is a guy whose really pissed off at the world, but he's smart enough to know he has only himself to blame for the mediocrity his life has been dealt. The horror on his face when he learns of his cancer will remain with me for a long time.
There are points at which the film seems to drag on, but never without purpose. When he dies, having finally given meaning to his existence, his coworkers and family members recount the final days with pity, confusion, and finally admiration. The scene lags, which makes us that much more insulted by their ignorance.
Live your life and don't waste it
"Death comes too quickly, enjoy life while you may" is the theme of this picture by Kurosawa. An old man, 25 years a do-nothing, paper-pushing bureaucrat, discovers he's dying of cancer. Suddenly he realizes he's lived an empty life and wants to finally do something for himself. He flounders at first looking for a way and then decides to help get a park built by tenaciously fighting through all the red tape necessary to get the job completed.
Most of the movie is concerned with the old man's "false search" for happiness - getting drunk, trying to befriend his young secretary. But then he hits upon his scheme for doing something worthwhile. And here, I think, Kurosawa blunders: he jumps the clock ahead five months to the man's death and tells the old man's story regarding the park in flashbacks as fellow workers and local politicians reminisce at his funeral. It breaks the flow of the movie badly and also changes its focus - we now get an attack on the bureaucracy. For the most part, however, the movie is very moving and the final word almost on the despair of a life not lived. Definitely worth a watch.
A Film That Embraces Life's Absurdities
Ikiru (To Live) is a chilling depiction of the film's "hero", Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a civil servant, who works in the city office as the Chief clerk. After receiving a medical examination, he discovers that he has gastric cancer in spite of the fact that the doctor informs him that it's merely a mild ulcer. Watanabe seeks guidance on how to spend his entire life savings. He promotes a novelist (Yunesuke Ito) to take him on a bar and club excursion in order to escape from headiness on his that was weighing on his mind. Only after befriending a former employee (Miki Odagiri) who makes toy bunnies for children, he soon decides that he has to do something meaningful for the remaining part of his life - to approve plans to build a city park.
This film is gripping in that it relates to the somewhat disillusionment and hope that many Japanese experienced after World War II. The main theme of the film deals with full disclosure or in simple terms, the truth. This assessment may be seen within the film as Watanabe keeps his knowledge of his illness to himself as a way to preserve his life. As he proceeds from day to day, the unbearable ness takes a toll. IRIKURU shows that despite social and cultural differences, individuals deal with unpleasant situations in the same way.
Director Akiru Kurosawa was one of the most legendary directors in Japanese film history, and the accompanying screenplay by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni is the most relevant aspect of the film. The cinematography is impeccable and reveals the emotions and actions of the actors. The film is dark and ironic at times - Watanabe's somewhat groaning chant of an old twenties ballad, "Fall in love, dear maiden..." is quiet haunting, but Kurosawa manages to allude to the viewer that a little bit of humor in the midst of death offers a sense of realism to the conscience.
No doubt, the film is a great achievement and should be viewed by film buffs or anyone interested in humanistic films without being too sentimental. IKIRU stands as a testament to the human spirit.
Produced with assistance from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, Dreams is an omnibus of eight short stories and parables that spell enchantment at every turn. The opening story, "Sun Under the Rain," emerges from director Akira Kurosawa's personal memories, as a child (whose house is modeled after Kurosawa's childhood home in Koishikawa) witnesses a fox's wedding ceremony in a magical forest. The Garden of Eden motif continues in "The Peach Orchard," while Lucas's ILM special effects group shines in the glorious "Crows" segment, in which an art admirer finds himself living within the paintings of Van Gogh (played with concentrated energy by Kurosawa enthusiast Martin Scorsese). In the idyllic closing fable, "The Village of the Watermills," a centenarian claims that "people... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Akira Terao - Mitsuko Baisho Director(s): Ishirô Honda - Akira Kurosawa DVD Release Date: Released the 18 March 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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At three brief hours, La Dolce Vita, a piece of cynical, engrossing social commentary, stands as Federico Fellini's timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence. A man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions (cool but tortured, sexy but impotent), he dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticizes finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marcello Mastroianni - Anita Ekberg Director(s): Federico Fellini DVD Release Date: Released the 21 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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During an unusual chapter in the career of director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon), the filmmaker went to Russia because he found working in his native Japan to be too difficult. The result was this striking 1975 near-epic based on the turn-of-the-century autobiographical novels of a military explorer (Yuri Solomin) who met and befriended a Goldi man in Russia's unmapped forests. Kurosawa traces the evolution of a deep and abiding bond between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the sub-zero Siberian woods. There's no question that Dersu Uzala (the film is named for the Goldi character, played by Maxim Munzuk) has the muscular, imaginative look of a large-canvas Soviet Mosfilm from the 1970s. But in its energy and insight it is absolutely Kurosawa,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Maksim Munzuk - Yuri Solomin Director(s): Akira Kurosawa DVD Release Date: Released the 17 October 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film, photographed by Sven Nykvist, begins when famous actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann) freezes on stage in the middle of a performance. Struck dumb by an unknown cause, she winds up in the care of young inexperienced nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson), and together they retreat to the seaside for the summer, where they enter into an uncommon intimacy and clash of wills. Bergman's study of the fragility of the human being and the treachery of life is incredibly moving in its perception and unrivaled imagery. And as always with Bergman and his reappearing ensemble of actors, the performances are flawless. Especially notable is the scene in which Alma recounts for the silent Elisabeth a morally and emotionally ambivalent erotic encounter she had experienced on a beach... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bibi Andersson - Liv Ullmann Director(s): Ingmar Bergman DVD Release Date: Released the 10 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1947 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's devastating post-war depression earned a special Oscar for its affecting power. Shot in the streets and alleys of Rome, De Sica uses the real-life environment of contemporary life to frame his moving drama of a desperate father whose new job delivering cinema posters is threatened when a street thief steals his bicycle. Too poor to buy another, he and his son take to the streets in an impossible search for his bike. Cast with nonactors and filled with the real street life of Rome, this landmark film helped define the Italian neorealist approach with its mix of real life details, poetic imagery, and warm sentimentality. De Sica uses the wandering pair to witness the lives of everyday folks, but ultimately he... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lamberto Maggiorani - Enzo Staiola Director(s): Vittorio De Sica DVD Release Date: Released the 24 November 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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