Very recently, I had an analysis written about an old Japanese film for an assignment. But I think such conclusions should be shared instead of just printed and handed in to a lecturer. Not many people have seen this film Ikiru directed by Akira Kurosawa. It's a film worth a trip to the esplanade library to borrow. This is my take on the film.
The film is divided into three sections. The first section shows the conflict between a community group and government officials over a vacant plot of land. The unfortunate citizens battle with bureaucracy, finding their appeal being pushed from department to department and back where it started. By the time it makes a full circle, Kurosawa has gone for his fateful medical appointment, where he learns that he has stomach cancer. (A side trivia: Stomach cancer is the leading cause of death in Japan at that time.) It is made more dramatic by the fact that he knows he is going to die and even the number of months he has left to live. After Watanabe leaves the doctor’s office, the doctor asks his intern: “If you were like him with only half a year to live, what would you do?” The film answers the question.
Back to the subject of bureaucracy and Watanabe being part of it, Watanabe is famously known as one who never takes a day off. In the opening scene, after introducing the ‘hero’ of the film, we see the typical Japanese government office: piles of paper on desks but no one is working. A scene perhaps making a point against bureaucracy.
At this juncture, Kurosawa forces his audience to witness the futility of his relationship with his son and daughter-in-law. Here we get to see scenes of the past and the present between Watanabe and his son, Mitso. Their relationship however had been strained, as Mitso and his wife seemed to care mainly about Watanabe’s pension and their future inheritance. This is proven by the conversation both husband and wife had in the house, not knowing that Watanabe had been quietly grieving in the dark.
Watanabe ‘comes to his senses’ and begins to reflect on how meaningless his life had been and resolves to make his last few months meaningful. Many times, he tries to break the news to his son but never had the chance to do so because Mitso simply ignores him. Realising his failure in both work and family, he encounters a novelist while drowning his sorrows in sake. The novelist takes him through the nightlife and vices of modern Japan - pinball, alcohol, strip clubs and dance halls. The night scene is so packed with people that it looks as though Watanabe is drowning in humanity. It was truly an experience for him but none of it satisfied his quest to seek meaning in his life and so he moves on.
The next phase begins with a girl, Toyo, from Watanabe’s office seeking his signature so she could leave her current job to a new one. This encounter with her leaves Watanabe ‘infatuated’ with her. He was not sexually attracted to her but admires her young and vibrant energy. After ‘dates’ with her, he tries to express himself but finds himself in difficulty. She misreads his intentions.
Toyo: What help am I?
Watanabe: You - 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. I want to do something. Only you can show me. I don't know what to do. I don't know how. Maybe you don't know either, but, please... if you can... show me how to be like you!
In the conversation at the coffee house, the scene becomes uncomfortable to watch as we see Watanabe practically trying to drain life out of Toyo. Toyo shows him what she does in her new job; she makes toy bunnies. The significance of her work comes when children find joy when playing with the bunnies she makes as she tells Watanabe:”... that is all I do, but I feel as though I am friends with all the children in Japan.” And that is the answer to the meaning of life that Watanabe has been searching for. Prior to this comment made by Toyo, Toyo had admitted to Watanabe that she gave him a nickname – the mummy. Watanabe had been living constantly under the slavery of his habits, his regular comforts, the empty hours he spends behind his desk, and the constant longing of the companionship of his son.
And Watanabe realises that being in the company of a younger individual would not help in his quest to seek meaning for his life but using what he has at that point to do something significant. After his conversation with Toyo, he returns to his office and searches his desk to find the long-neglected petition that originated from the community group – something no public official does.
The final phase moves the audience forward to Watanabe’s funeral. His death appears as sudden to his colleagues and family as we see them recalling Watanabe’s last days. Their discussion centres around a debate on whether Watanabe knew of his impending death. The pieces of the puzzle are placed in the flashbacks of what Watanabe did. He had arduously sought approval and personally saw through the construction of the park on the vacant plot of land. The futility of bureaucracy came through as the audience see Watanabe constantly and even violently rejected by the top positions in the civil office.
Ironically, Ikiru is the Japanese term for the phrase “to live”. Watanabe had only truly lived in the face of impending death. Such humanistic take forces the audience to contemplate on their own sense of mortality for indeed life is short. Awakened by the knowledge of his coming death, Watanabe realises he is like a corpse, dead for 25 years. The novelist he met made the profound comment, “... having cancer has made you taste life. Man is such a fool. It is always just when he is going to leave it that he finally discovers how beautiful life can be.”
One manipulation Kurosawa engaged in the film is the manipulation of time in a series of shots showing the group being frustrated by the wheels of bureaucracy. The dissolves between each shot indicate the passing of time. Kurosawa also uses flashbacks significantly in the scenes showing Watanabe and his son Mitso when Mitso was a child. The voice of Mitso as a child echoes the warmth and the loving relationship he had with his father, a stark contrast to the distant relationship they have at the present moment. The use of such contrasts and cross dissolves evokes feelings of pity and dejection the audience is made to feel for Watanabe. Watanabe then is seen as one who has no present or future but a person who lives in the past
The brilliance of the film is evident with the way it has been distinctly divided. In the first half, we know of Watanabe’s situation, the reasons for his sudden mood change, his apparent frivolous night he had with the novelist, and his attraction to Toyo. The other characters being oblivious to what he is going through are left puzzled at his ‘outrageous’ behaviour while we see something like ‘the blog of Watanabe’. Ironically, it’s the people who do not share any close relationship with him that know of his condition: that would be us as the audience and the doctors who diagnosed him. Those whom he love dearly and those who share a more personal relationship with him were ignorant to what he is suffering.
At the second half, the film cuts to the wake of Watanabe and for a moment we are left to figure what Watanabe had done in the last few weeks or months of his life. The question is then addressed by the various accounts of the people who encountered him before he died, making sense of his actions which seemed unusual for Watanabe. This sort of reminds me of the Rashamon effect, where many accounts of the same event are given. This however differs to Rashamon as accounts were motivated by opinions and not facts. We see the reactions of others towards him, their excuses, their inadvertent knowledge on the truth, and the rejection of both the truth and Watanabe.
Some of the key recollections of Watanabe’s actions serve as proof of the determination Watanabe had to live life. The park serves as a pretext for this action. It does not matter who tries to claim credit for building the park because that isn’t the main issue here. The key is that Watanabe discovered life through dedicating himself to build the park. It isn’t the result, it is the process that mattered here. As a few testimonies were told, we find out that Watanabe went through what most people wouldn’t. He had forced his way through bureaucracy, humbly sitting and waiting, and most of all not being intimidation and not taking ‘no’ for an answer. When asked why such treatment and humiliation doesn’t anger him, all he says is: “No, I can’t be angry with anyone. I don’t have the time to be angry.” This makes one clue big enough to conclude Watanabe’s knowledge of his coming death.
At this scene in the funeral parlour, the camera is placed at a low height, as though we are all part of the wake, and we the audience have a testimony of our own about Watanabe. The final revelation came only when a police officer enters with the battered hat of Watanabe and tells of seeing him on the swing in the park, singing mournfully in the snow.
Music played a very major role in the film. When Watanabe explores the nightlife, a notable scene is in a night club where Watanabe requests the pianist to play the song Gondola no Uta. He then sings the song in great sadness, affecting those watching him. The song is a ballad written in 1915, the lyrics encouraging maidens to find love while they are still young and beautiful, for everything fades quickly. And this reflects strongly the theme of the film. At the end of the film it is this song that Watanabe sings while sitting on a swing.
In the beginning portion of the film, as Watanabe is home, the radio in his son’s room ironically plays the song Too Young to Love. During the flashback scenes of Watanabe’s wife’s funeral and the young days of Mitso, the oboe melody plays on. In the bar, J’ai deux amours is played. When Watanabe vomited, Music Mambo – Take it Away was played and the whores in the car sang Come On ’a My House.
In the scene at the coffee house where Watanabe tries in vain to express himself to Toyo, Poupee valsante played over the phonograph. As Watanabe struggles in his confession, Toyo occasionally glances enviously at the other customers her age. The music then changes to The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. Once Watanabe grabs the toy rabbit and runs down the stairs, a young lady all dressed up ascends the stairs with a birthday cake and the others sing Happy Birthday. So it is a surprised birthday celebration going on in the background. The irony is seen in that as youth goes up the stairs, age goes down.
This is a film so haunting and touching because we are made to feel the emotions of Watanabe. We had been given the privilege of being his ‘unseen companion’ in the beginning. In terms of even relevance, Ikiru’s setting is in the 1950s but today, the principle behind the film lives on, about living life in no obligation to anything or anyone but to the self. Richard Brown said:
“Ikiru is a cinematic expression of modern existentialist thought. It consists of a restrained affirmation within the context of a giant negation. What it says in starkly lucid terms is that ‘life’ is meaningless when everything is said and done; at the same time one man’s life can acquire meaning when he undertakes to perform some task which to him is meaningful. What everyone else thinks about the man’s life is utterly beside the point, even ludicrous. The meaning of his life is what he commits the meaning of his life to be. There is nothing else.”
With much subtlety and toying with film parameters, Kurosawa brought about one of the most profound films, one on the surface looked simple and perhaps irrelevant but watching carefully would hear the movie screaming a big wake up call to those who waste their lives away.
