Ikiru (1952)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni
Starring Takashi Shimura

I don't think you get any more ambitious in a movie. Japan's greatest director, working with his most reliable actor in a film about the meaning of life. In fact, the title of the film Ikiru means "to live."

Kanji Watanabe, played by Takashi Shimura, is a the section chief in city hall's public affairs office. He's been doing mindless work for thirty years without missing a day, when he finds out that he has stomach cancer and has less than six months to live. It is then that the bureaucrat -- and the viewer -- are faced with the question of how one should live his life.

The film takes the form of an argument. First, Watanabe tries living hedonistically. He goes to what appears to be Japan's version of Vegas and blows 50 yen in one night (his son and his daughter-in-law talked about buying a modern house for 200 yen).

After returning from his binge, he runs into the young female employee from his office who is bored out of her mind at work and needs his authorization to resign -- apparently the office comes to a standstill when Watanabe isn't there to approve everything that happens. He decides that the meaning of life is in meaningful relationships. But although he appears content with a platonic relationship, she gets creeped out.

So finally, he looks for his purpose in the place that he feels that sucked it out of him: his work. It's an affirmation of the Protestant Work Ethic that would make even John Calvin smile. After his death, his coworkers throughout city hall wonder what a could have caused a loyal worker to decide to actually get something accomplished. Its an indictment of bureacracy that every government worker should be forced to watch.

Shimura plays Watanabe with a mix of brokenness and horror at his fate. Two years later, he would play the leader of a band of samurais hired to protect a village in Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, which for my money is the best samurai film ever made. His range was extraordinary, which is why the descendant of the warrior samurai class was so closely associated with Kurosawa.

It is also one of those films where you get the idea that every image has a deeper meaning and that Kurosawa instilled so many layers into the film that you could watch it five or six times and still notice new things. For example, it is no coincidence that as Watanabe has his epiphany, he he stumbles out of a restaurant where a girl's birthday party is happening. As he stumbles out, the girls begin singing "Happy Birthday," signifying his new life that is about to begin.

Ikiru deserves its standing as one of Japan's, and specifically Kurosawa's, most important films.