Ikiru (1952)

To be busy is not the same as really devoting oneself to what one does. This is what Kiekegaard talks about in Purity of heart and it is what Kurasawa shows in his somewhat messy film Ikiru. In the first part of the film, we see how a group of town residents make an appeal to the authorities. They want a playground. The site is flooded with water and something is to be done. Watanabe is one of the bureaucrats that make a business like this one something to be shuffled from office to office. Whose responsibility is it to take care of the sewage? Someone else's clearly. Watanabe learns that he has cancer. The rest of the film is a variation of The Death of Ivan Illich. Watanabe gradually comes to understand that his life has been empty, that he has been busy without doing anything important. Now, he tries to make up for the years he has lost on petty trifles. At first, he tries to have as much fun as possible, he even buys himself a sporty hat. Well, it starts to feel hollow. A colleague from work accompanies him on walks and seem to be someone who could be his friend. His son and daughter-in-law are shocked to see him with a much younger woman. There are a few misunderstandings and their friendship is partly destroyed. Watanabe returns to work. Now, he is a changed man; no longer conforming to being the conventional bureacrat, he makes the process of building a playground get started - and the job is finished. In the last part of the film, Watanabe's colleagues dissect the man's last effort during the drunken funeral. Some of them insist that he is not to be praised for the finishing of the project. Others claim that Watanabe was brave enough to reject the constricted professional role. The last 30 minutes of the film contain several superfluous flashbacks, but this does not take away my fascination with looking at Kurasawa's extreme close-ups of drunken faces.

Ikiru might live up to most of our expectations about what a film about a dying bureacrat might look like. Still, in many respects, it is a good film that comprises a few surprisingly strong scenes. In one of them, a piano player performes a tune while the bar bustles in a melancholy way. In another eerie scene, Watanabe and his colleague sit quietly at a café table. Suddenly, the colleague grabs a toy bunny from her bag. The toy bunny dances on the table - it is a joy to see Watanabe's priceless facial expression.