Ikiru (1952)

Japan

Drama

TOHO

Takashi Shimura, Haruo Tanaka, Nobuo Kaneko, Bokuzen Hidari, Miki Odagiri, Shinichi Himori

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni

Taglines: A big story of a little man which will grip your soul ...

dying and death, japan, bureaucracy, age difference, praise, office, night life, sense of life, playground, obsequies, swing, loneliness, office politics, infatuation, wake, public works, short time to live, bureaucrat, thoughts of retirement, terminal cancer, city park, civil servant, monotonous life, accomplishments, office gossip

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Reviews:

Author: narrator56
I watched the English follow-up version (Living) before watching this original, and wished I had reversed my order. I liked Living much more than this original, but since both were written by the same Japanese scriptwriter, my preference might be cultural rather than due to quality issues, not to mention the scriptwriter had come up with improvements through the intervening years. The club and bar scenes near the beginning seem to go on much longer than in the remake, or at least it felt like it! And the same for the later scenes with the young woman. Then again, that wouldn’t be surprising since this older version is 40 minutes longer. Still, the differences in the details based on the separate cultures are interesting to note, and I recommend both versions, though I would start with the older one as I mentioned above.