• Both visually masterful and staggeringly profound and poignant
  • One of cinema’s greatest character studies- Kane, Raging Bull– the examination of a man’s life. A bit of It’s A Wonderful Life and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
  • Kurosawa adapted Dostoevsky the year before with The Idiot but achieves here a work on the level of those novels he clearly admired
  • Opens with an omniscient narrator on an x-ray of Shimura’s Kanji Watanabe
  • Kurosawa’s meticulous mise-en-scene arrangement of Shimura’s character’s office—a fortress of paperwork keeping him captive, a magnificent shot (one of 30-40 art museum up on a wall pieces in the film) from behind his head with the two rows of workers flanking him
magnificent shot (one of 30-40 art museum up on a wall pieces in the film) from behind his head with the two rows of workers flanking him
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ikiru-lakjdflkjaflakdjf.jpg
Kurosawa’s meticulous mise-en-scene arrangement of Shimura’s character’s office—a fortress of paperwork keeping him captive
  • A montage of the government bureaucracy runaround—this isn’t just exposition tough as we would come to find out—shred narrative economy and formally Kurosawa would bring the playground full circle in the devastating finale
  • Shimura gives one of the better performances of the 1950’s- often a physical silent performance, the pained grimace—the vast canvas of face, slumping of the shoulders
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is sahashi-shimura-ikiru-1024x667.jpg
Shimura gives one of the better performances of the 1950’s- often a physical silent performance, the pained grimace—the vast canvas of face, slumping of the shoulders
  • A triumph of black and white deep focus photography that passes Wyler and heads squarely into the Welles territory – compositions that may not have have Welles’ playfulness and inventiveness with angles but surely rival them in beauty
  • The narrative structure is different (and not as earth-shattering) than Rashomon but slyly complex as well—we start with knowing Shimura’s character’s fate, we have the shattering flashbacks of raising his son: the funeral, baseball, appendix, his son going off to war—. He dies at the 92 minute mark in in a 143 minute film – like Citizen Kane here we get multiple opinions and people trying to define a life posthumously- a intriguing and bold structure
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ikiru-lkajdfkljalfkjklajafd-1024x768.jpg
a signature Kurosawa shot- centralized figure in the foreground and dueling figures in the background creating a triangle of deep focus
  • The intersecting heads at the bar in the frame at 39 minutes like the famous shot from Bergman’s Persona – which is fourteen years after this, there’s an obstructed window at the bar, the neon signage bouncing off the window of the car during the night of drinking
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ikiru-alkjdflkalkfj-alkjdflka.jpg
the neon signage bouncing off the window of the car during the night of drinking
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ikiru-lakjdfkljaldkfjldakfj.jpg
One of cinema’s greatest character studies- Kane, Raging Bull– the examination of a man’s life
  • Another highlight of the deep focus depth of frame foreground/background work is the 74 minute mark with Shimura and the tea in the foreground
Another highlight of the deep focus depth of frame foreground/background work is the 74 minute mark with Shimura and the tea in the foreground
  • There are 30-40 of these- at 83 minutes when Shirmua and the young female former co-worker are at dinner talking there is an entire birthday party going on in the background in deep focus—marvelous work
  • A dazzler of a shot off a mirror at the funeral
A dazzler of a shot off a mirror at the funeral
  • At the 127 minute mark Kurosawa tracks the camera forward slowly admiring the sunset
At the 127 minute mark Kurosawa tracks the camera forward slowly admiring the sunset — this would pair with the final frame
  • One of the defining scenes in cinema in the 1950’s is Kurosawa’s shot through the play structure at the 137 minute mark tracking along, creating a frame within a frame (and surrounding labyrinth structure) of Shimura on the swing. It is absolutely breathtaking. It strikes me as one of the greatest single shots and/or frames of the 1950’s along with the opening and closing shots in The Searchers, the opening of Touch of Evil, the 360 green-tinted shot in Vertigo, perhaps a half dozen others.
one of the defining scenes in cinema in the 1950’s is Kurosawa’s shot through the play structure at the 137 minute mark tracking along, creating a frame within a frame (and surrounding labyrinth structure) of Shimura on the swing. It is absolutely breathtaking
  • Between Drunken Angel in 1948 and Red Beard in 1965 it is the only Kurosawa film I believe that does not to feature Mifune. It is largely Shimura’s show as far as acting goes so I don’t see a great role for him though I would have loved to have seen Mifune play the man at the bar.
  • I adore Ebert—but 1200 words+ on the narrative arc and character- nothing on the deep focus and visual brilliance. I can’t tell if this wasn’t his focus, or he knew he was writing for everyone- not just cinephiles
  • A masterpiece