OF ALL Akira Kurosawa's pictures, "Ikiru" is the one that bores most single-mindedly into the morality of his subject's life. And quite probably ours, too. After all, a movie about an office worker who spends his whole adult life doing nothing except working has got to hit home in our market-economy existence.
The Japanese filmmaker's 1952 film has been newly restored. It screens though Feb. 16 at the American Film Institute.
Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru" is newly restored and screening at the AFI.
(Cowboy Pictures)
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Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a petty chief in the Tokyo local government, holds the rubber stamp that can stall any progress. All repair or construction problems cross his desk, and with one stamp, he blots out any hope of action. Divided into bickering sections, from Engineering to Public Works, this bureaucracy is a Dickensian study in social futility.
Watanabe, who has worked there 30 years, thinks merely about showing up for work and about efficiency. He never considers the lives his department touches, or doesn't, until two fatalistically connected events occur. Watanabe learns he has stomach cancer, and a group of ladies come to the office to demand the government do something about the free-flowing cesspool in their neighborhood.
It takes some time for Watanabe to learn the truth about his condition; the doctors are just as adroit with meaningless doublespeak as his fellow clerks. But soon enough, he gets it. He barely has a year to live. Maybe as few as six months.
He stops going to work. But Watanabe's home isn't much warmer than his office nook. His son and daughter-in-law, who live with him, are nasty, self-obsessed penny pinchers. So Watanabe embarks on a grim odyssey of wide-eyed misery through Tokyo's smoky jazz joints, dance halls and bars.
When he bumps into a perky, much younger office associate, he gets a new charge out of life: a companion on whom he can bestow his unspent affections. At first, she is only too happy to be wined and dined. But after a time, she decides this newfound sugar-daddy relationship is too strange and begs out.
Watanabe is faced, again, with his emptiness. His attention turns to the group of ladies, whose calls for help have gone unheeded.
As Watanabe, Shimura (one of Kurosawa's regular performers) is impeccable. If his bug-eyed performance seems over the top at times, that's part of the package. He's a discomforting, hapless man. But there's something about this Japanese Mr. Magoo that affects us. He's another human imprisoned in minutiae.
Kurosawa stays powerfully on course. This is a thorough movie that never strays from the driving main plot: the changing Watanabe. But along the way, there are many visual timepieces to break up the one-track momentum, particularly during Watanabe's trek through the nightlife: the greasy-haired boogie-woogie pianist who sings requested songs with two vigorous showgirls dancing along, for one. And also, the nightclub stage where an undulating stripper, adorned in veils, sways her hips before a sea of upturned, male Japanese faces.
For my taste, a climactic scene, in which the impact of Watanabe's life is measured at his wake, could be the longest such scene ever filmed. Kurosawa, never known for his ability to step away before things get too precious and poignant, indulges himself a little too much. But this scene takes you to a new place in the story, and you are left with the two most powerful images in the film: Watanabe's photograph hanging over his wake, mutely dominating everything, and the dying clerk on a child's swing in a snow-covered park, singing a sad ballad for himself and all humanity. Take a look at this film. At the very least, it'll prompt you to assess your balance of work and life, and you may find yourself putting in for a little vacation time.
IKIRU (Unrated, 143 minutes) -- Contains scenes of drunkenness. In black-and-white. In Japanese with subtitles. At the American Film Institute theater at the Kennedy Center through Feb 16.
