Ikiru
is a 1952 Japanese tragedy film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) and his final quest for meaning. The screenplay was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Plot
Kanji Watanabe has worked in the same monotonous, bureaucratic position in the Tokyo public works department for thirty years and is close to retirement. His wife is dead, and his son, Mitsuo, who lives with his wife in his father's home, seems eager to claim both his father's estate and lifetime pension. At work, he's a party to constant bureaucratic inaction. In one case, a group of parents who simply want permission to drain a cesspool so they can install a playground are endlessly routed to different offices in the same building.
More details
| author | Akira Kurosawa Hideo Oguni Shinobu Hashimoto |
|---|---|
| contentLocation | Tokyo |
| director | Akira Kurosawa |
| events | old age |
| genre | drama social |
| keywords | build gondola no uta learn new job open public works sing |
| musicBy | Fumio Hayasaka |
| producer | Sōjirō Motoki |
| productionCompany | Toho |
| publisher | Toho |
| theme | death japanese |