Ikiru opens with the narrator of the film describing Kanji Watanabe to the audience – an elderly, devoid of life, ground down, all-around-bummer of a public works bureaucrat. Sitting at his desk and stamping his seal on document after document, the dreary office life is briefly interrupted by a group of local women asking for someone to help them clean up a sewage-filled lot overrun with mosquitoes and dirty water that is making their kids ill. Well, ladies, that sounds like a parks division problem, or actually that’s a sanitation issue, or maybe it has to do with the school district chief? As these women are bounced from office to office, the audience is granted a peek at the soul-crushing bureaucracy of local government. Shortly after, Watanabe goes to the doctor to find out that he has stomach cancer and roughly six months to live. A few hours later, Watanabe is sitting at home in the dark when his son and daughter-in-law come home while discussing how badly they want to move out and just how much money they’ll inherit once poor old Watanabe dies. Yeah, it’s a pretty rough opening.

Feeling down from the combination of his pointless job, ungrateful son, and newly inherited death sentence, Watanabe goes to a small pub to drown his sorrows – something he’s never even thought about doing in his 60-odd years of life. It is there we meet the novelist. The novelist and Watanabe get to talking and, moved by just how badly Watanabe’s life sucks, the novelist agrees to help him cut loose and spend some of his hard-earned money. Booze, women, and miscellaneous debauchery are had and the next day Watanabe is exhausted. This is also the moment we see Watanabe begin his quest for meaning. Although currently undirected, Watanabe’s long-extinguished joie de vivre has reawoken. However, it isn’t until his meeting with Odagiri, a young and bubbly girl from his office, that Watanabe has an outlet for his newfound drive. Well, it isn’t until Odagiri admits to him that she finds him a little creepy and is confused why he’s spending so much time with her, that his drive is found.

After a brief period of playing sugar daddy and worrying just about everyone in his life, Watanabe comes back to work and he’s only got one goal – cover that dirty old sewage with a brand spanking new park. Oh yeah, he also dies – kinda. The audience is brought forward six months in time to Watanabe’s wake where we discover he accomplished his goal and the park is complete. From this point on, the story is told through the eyes of his wake attendees and their memories of Watanabe’s last six months on Earth. His family, coworkers, and high-ranking members of the local government are all in attendance. 

Here again, bureaucracy rears its ugly head. Instead of sharing stories about Watanabe or congratulating him on his efforts toward the completion of the park, the deputy mayor instead is credited. It isn’t until the government bigwigs leave the wake that someone bravely speaks up and calls bullshit on the whole machine. Whether it was the sake or the sheer admiration of Watanabe’s herculean efforts to actually do something in local government, I can’t say, but here the story picks up again and we see the final few months of Watanabe’s life play out. 

In parallel to the beginning of the film, Watanabe is bounced from department to department being brushed off and disregarded. However, this time he has nothing to lose. Watanabe won’t take no for an answer. Ironically rejuvenated by his lethal stomach cancer he manages to trudge through the endless paperwork and political shmoozing needed to build his park. We then find out that Watanabe died in the very same park he was so adamant about building. The wake attendees, now more comfortable due to the departure of Mayor and co. (and the sake they’ve been pounding all night), begin to voice both their admiration for Watanabe and their shame that they can’t do the same thing he did. Together, they vow to change their ways and live life in a manner that would make their dear departed friend proud. 

Wow, what a great ending! A little played out but hey, this movie is from the 50s, that’s to be expected. Wait, what? There’s still 5 more minutes? What happens? Yup, you might have guessed it, the next morning at work a group of women comes into Watanabe’s old department asking for someone to help fix an empty lot with sewage pouring out of it. The drunken pledge is seemingly forgotten and the group of women are told that, actually, that’s a sanitation problem – go ask them to do something about it.

I really enjoyed Ikiru. It discusses two of my greatest fears, the dreaded 9-5 and bloated, slow-moving government bureaucracy. The story is great, although a little drawn out, and you really connect with Watanabe. It’s easy to understand how he got himself into the position he’s in, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has imagined all the crazy things I would do if I were to find out I only had six months to live. Watanabe’s goal of building a park is a little more noble than what immediately popped into my mind, but that makes his character all the more redeemable. Faced with the realization that he’s pretty much done nothing in his life, he summons the courage to not give up in the face of the administrative monster he’s spent the last 30 years helping prop up. All-in-all the story felt really modern, which is kind of depressing that in 70 years humanity still hasn’t found a better method to the madness than molasses-like paperwork to accomplish anything. I mean it literally takes a dude sacrificing the last six months of his life to build a single park.

As for the filmmaking itself, there’s not a whole lot for me to say honestly. Camera work didn’t add or subtract to Ikiru in my opinion. Now maybe that’s due to me not recognizing greatness, or maybe it’s due to the story not really needing any fancy camera work, or some combination of both. I’ve not seen other Japanese films from the 50s so it’s hard to understand if Ikiru was ahead of its time in reference to filmmaking. To me, it seems as though it would have looked pretty similar visually if this story came out today rather than 70 years ago – which I guess says something.

The acting was another aspect of Ikiru that I don’t have a particularly strong opinion on (man I might be a terrible movie reviewer). I did notice that the ladies had a stronger performance than the fellas, as some of the reactions from Watanabe were kind of strange. Something I’ve come to realize about old cinema is that the actors act like they are on the stage rather than the big screen. Now this might be something that has changed over time and evolved throughout the years, but Ikiru, M, and 12 Angry Men all share this quality in my eyes. Maybe it’s a camera-quality thing? You know, cameras and screens back then couldn’t do the subtle human reactions any justice so actors had to rely on big, over-exaggerated movements and facial reactions to get the point across. That’s just a theory I came up with as I’m writing this, but it seems not half bad. Overall, the acting wasn’t fantastic, but it was pretty decent compared to the small amount of pre-70s movies I’ve seen, so Ikiru gets a bump from me in the acting category.

Overall, Ikiru is a classic. It tells a story that can be understood nearly 100 years later on an even deeper level than the crowds of the 50s maybe could. The filmmaking and acting aren’t anything revolutionary in my opinion, but the story is really where Ikiru shines, and it shines pretty bright. Therefore:

Story 9.5/10, Filmmaking 5/10, Acting 7/10, Total 7.2/10

*Side Note: I changed up the format in which I write the review a little here. On this one I tried going deeper into the synopsis and giving little reviews/analysis throughout and then breaking out story, filmmaking, and acting. Not sure if I’ll keep doing it this way or maybe try a different way in the future. My M review was more stream-of-consciousness, which I like, but a little structure is nice. I’ll most likely try to find a nice meeting point of having essentially a rubric while also keeping it very conversational and flowy.