Ikiru Critique

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Ikiru is the story of Kanji Watanabe, who, when facing death, finally realizes that he has led a meaningless life—that he has not lived at all. In fact, Watanabe has crafted his life to avoid passion and action. The film often depicts Watanabe, played by Takashi Shimura, in an office environment that emphasizes his physical and emotional absence. Watanabe is diagnosed with stomach cancer; it is his ultimate death sentence. The news shocks the protagonist and leads to his despair. After disavowing his prior existence and accepting a search for a meaningful life, Watanabe experiments with various approaches to living, each with different moral implications. The film Ikiru is divided into two sections: the first division, (covering two-thirds of the film,) begins with an omniscient narrator’s presentation of an x-ray of Watanabe’s stomach and the knowledge that he has terminal cancer. The music in the opening sequence is put together beautifully by composer Fumio Hayasaka, and on point with every scene, and in my opinion is what really tied this movie together. The knowledge of his terminal illness demonstrates Watanabe’s progression from the discovery of his cancer to the realization that he can proactively impart meaning to his life. We see the progression of his character as a stern beaurocrat to a fragile person. The director, Akira Kirusawa does an amazing job at showing this transformation. The realness of the scene where the man describes the symptoms of stomach cancer to Watanabe does an excellent job of foreshadowing the following scene where the doctors tell him; in fact he does have stomach cancer with only six months to live. The pain and anguish expressed on Wantanabe’s face, magnified by the camera with multiple close-up shots resonate with the audience and really hit home to me, (my uncle died of cancer and was told he only had nine months to
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