Ikiru

Ikiru

Akira Kurasawa is not a director of movies in my eyes. He comments on men and their nature. The medium of movie just happens to be his personal favourite. Ikiru is yet another movie that emphasized this thought of mine. The movie starts with a brilliant depiction of red-tapism. A set of women that need a park repaired come to the city office. The maze that they get into can only be seen in the movie. Our bueraucrat protagonist works in the same city office and finds out that he's going to die in a few months due to stomach cancer.

Reminisces about his son and the sacrifices he had to do for his son's sake are quickly followed by scenes that show the son's attitude of being a typically selfish human being. Kurasawa excels in portraying these scenes to emphasize man's loneliness in this world. He does not treat the son as an astray. He also follows the scenes between the son and daughter in law where they discuss the usage of pension after the protagonist dies, with an incident that he narrates during his childhood, where he was left to drown with his parents afar. All this make you feel that man is finally alone in his conquest of life.

In such an ambience, he moves on to find the essence of "to live". By eliminating inter personal relations skillfully, Kurasawa makes IKIRU a personal journey, He then indulges in pleasures, that make him feel that they are not worth living for. And then he meets a junior of his in his office, who he feels is full of life. He tries to find out what is it that makes her alive. Amidst many beautifully crafted scenes, he finds out that the essence of her life is in finding pleasure in every small thing that we do. Its in doing what we want we do, irrespective of the hurdles that you might encounter.

During the realisation, there is a well conceived scene where the protagonist suddenly finds an energy "to Live" and walks down a staircase when a teenage girl is walking up the same stairs on her birthday. All her friends sing "Happy birthday", indicating that our dear protagonist started living that moment.

Kurasawa uses the two half of the movies to signify transition from one thought to another very well. Similar to High and Low, Ikiru also has been divided into two parts quite significantly.

The protagonist uses his inspired few moments remaining in his life to get a park repaired in a suburb. The second half is about his funeral. The city's deputy mayor and his supporters are present at the funeral. During an argument, they vehemently deny the efforts of the protagonist in building the park. And so do the protagonist's colleagues.