Critical Recommendation: Ikiru

生きる - Ikiru. It's Japanese for to live. It can also merely mean to exist.

Today, we as a collective culture have a bad habit of praising movies just because they happen to be old. We even come up with weird sayings like no one makes good movies anymore. We forget that the reason some old movies are still talked about today is because they had the cinematic prowess to survive the test of time. How many old movies have been forgotten? To take my point even further, how many relatively old movies from the 80s and 90s have been forgotten? If you have the habit of saying things like no one makes good movies anymore, pick up some pop culture material from those eras, and you may be surprised. Don't ask me why I read books full of advertisements from the 20th century - it's a homeschooler thing. However, I think it's perfectly appropriate to talk about old movies that are still recognized in moviegoing and movie-studying circles today because they're still talked about for a reason. Enter Akira Kurosawa's drama Ikiru. I'd heard all sorts of things about Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and I plan to eventually post to my site about it. However, Ikiru has under a hundred thousand reviews on IMDb, and for a movie that old, that's unusual. It's also a shame that this movie doesn't get talked about enough because it's really a great movie. But to pivot in ways you may not find satisfying in the slightest, I'm going to make a statement that a lot of you are probably not going to like: in black and white movies, there exists a barrier between us and illusion that does not exist in modern cinema. Why is that? Simply put, our eyes see the world in color, and what we hear with our ears does not sound like a popping, scratching 1950s monaural recording. It can be harder for top-of-the-line classic movies to grab us in ways that top-of-the-line movies made today can, and that's just how things are. And so, I think that classic movies that are better at breaking this barrier than most deserve to get talked about. Ikiru is one of those movies. Allow me to explain.

Ikiru is a 1952 Japanese melodrama that follows Mr. Watanabe, a man who works in a public works department and discovers one day that he has terminal cancer. As he navigates the inevitable personal whirlwind that comes with this diagnosis, he finds joy in the enthusiasm of Toyo, a cheery young woman who comes to his office for a signature on her resignation.

One thing that I liked about Ikiru is how ahead of it's time it was in terms of the filmmaking techniques utilized. There are some parts of this movie that are narrated with a voice-over, and this is very unusual for a fictional film made in the 1950s. Narration had been a common technique in movies when sound was first invented, but had largely fallen by the wayside in the mid-20th century, except for in documentaries. What's more, it's used to great effect in Ikiru. There's also some effective fast-cutting in some parts of the film, and I had actually never seen this technique used in any old movies. It's a trick I'm used to seeing in modern movies that use digital editing software, not classic movies that are restricted to cutting physical film. A lot of the cinematography in Ikiru is very advanced for its time as well and utilizes parts of the environment - namely mirrors - in ways that surprised me for a movie as old as this one.

As for what's actually in the film, the problems of both Mr. Watanabe and the people coming in and out of his office are very plainly established and followed through with. We understand why these problems are a big deal and why they matter to the characters in this movie, and in a way, that makes them matter to us too. Actually, to apply this observation to every facet of this movie, Ikiru knows how to make you care about what it cares about, and it's strangely affecting and emotionally intimate for a movie as old as it is - Takashi Shimura's striking acting as Mr. Watanabe makes sure of this. I liked how this movie featured Watanabe contemplating the worth of living when he knows he's going to die, whether life is worth less or more than it was before his diagnosis. It's also an interesting meditation on regret and what Watanabe thinks could have been.

However, what elevates Ikiru even higher than other similar movies is that it's not just a one-trick pony. The juxtaposition between the gloominess of Watanabe and the joy of Toyo, a young woman he meets, is one of the most effective things about it. The two make for such an incredible pairing, and I really love how Toyo brought a different, happier side out of Watanabe as the story plays out - I won't lie to you, she brought me an unexpected joy as well. And just as Toyo affects Watanabe, it's just as interesting to see how Watanabe affects not just Toyo, but every other character in the movie. This movie cares about the idea of legacy, a legacy that is felt intimately and even a little bit painfully. Ikiru, being made with the limitations of 1950s cinema, has absolutely no right to be as touching as it is, and this intimacy is just the cherry on top of every other good thing I can say about this truly great film.

There's something to be said about how nostalgia can taint our perception of the past, and likewise, there's also something to be said about how some movies being released today will become the classics of tomorrow. But ultimately, it isn't wrong to take lessons from the masterpieces of days gone by - and believe me when I say that Ikiru fits the bill of a masterpiece in every way. This movie overcomes the technical limitations of its day to reach out and grab you with an earnestness and intimacy that is universal and timeless. And I say this as a young man who presumably has his whole life ahead of him, Lord willing. I wonder how my perception of this movie will change as I grow older. Maybe I'll identify more and more with the kind of regrets that Watanabe has. Or maybe I can learn from this movie and be willing to take a different approach than he. It's easy to look back on our mistakes with regret. And for some reason, it's hard to look forward to the leap into eternity with hope.

May we be courageous enough to be a people who dare to hope.

Ikiru - 10/10

Ecclesiastes 2:10-11