Ikiru 4K 1952 Ultra HD 2160p

Kenji Witanabe, a department head at city hall, learns that he has cancer and only a few months left to live. He doesn’t tell anyone, but comes to realize that he is, in fact, very lonely and estranged from his son and daughter-in-law. Kenji suddenly realizes that his life has been empty, boring, and pointless—wasted on a mindless job where he never missed a single day. He withdraws all his money from his account and walks off into the Tokyo night. He meets a down-and-out poet and pours out his heart to him. Together, they wander through the city. When Kenji returns home, his son, who doesn’t understand what’s going on, reproaches him. After running into a girl from the office, Kenji finds her a new job making children’s toys, which gives him an unexpected purpose in life. He pushes through all the bureaucratic paperwork needed to set up playgrounds, rushing to get something done…

User Review

Akira Kurosawa isn’t just some run-of-the-mill director like Vasya Pupkin from *Love, Love*—his films are serious, thought-provoking, and true to life. That’s why I hesitated for a long time before watching this movie, doubting I’d even make it through the first fifteen minutes. I was completely wrong. After watching it, I was utterly surprised to read comments from people who called the film heavy, gloomy, and steeped in despair and suffering. I’d call it sarcastic, if anything.

There is a complete absence here of the relishing of tragedy, the building of dramatic tension, and the tear-jerking that so many directors love. There isn’t a single shot that shows the agony of a man dying of stomach cancer. Kurosawa clearly defined the circumstances within which he intended to work with the story: Kanji Watanabe has lived a worthless, useless, empty life—or rather, he has never really lived at all; he is a mummy. He learns that he is sick and has very little time left. That’s it. No, he won’t spend his remaining time on entertainment, as the characters in the modern film *Before I Kick the Bucket*; he won’t go looking for everyone he’s ever wronged, grovel at their feet, and beg for forgiveness; he won’t have long, tearful conversations with his son, who can’t wait for him to die so he can get his inheritance. And he won’t even fall in love one last time. He’ll do what he spent nearly thirty years working toward at the Department of Public Affairs, without taking a single day off. One single task. Instead of the mountain of work he was supposed to have done over three decades. And there will be no fanfare or revolution; nothing will change, not even within the confines of that small department—everything will remain just as it was. And hardly anyone will know about his actions. Because that is the real world—one that Akira Kurosawa does not try to embellish or, conversely, to vilify; he simply chronicles it, showing events in their true light. Just look at the bureaucracy, taken to the point of absurdity.

The casting choice and the actor’s performance are brilliant. He acts not with words, not with his body, but seemingly only with his face. He is so pitiful in his worthlessness, his misery, and his desire to do at least something… Like a little bug. No one has ever expected anything good from him in his entire life; everyone quietly hates him, despises him, undermines him, mocks him… And the viewer, too, sees by no means a hero. But not a villain, either. And you feel sorry for him—the kind of pity you feel when you see a person humiliating himself, a person who has deserved that humiliation.

This film is worth watching—and not just once. It remains relevant half a century after its release and will remain so for many decades to come. A magnificent work.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (79.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Info Audio

#Japanese: FLAC 1.0
#English: FLAC 1.0 (Commentary by film historian and author Stephen Prince)
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by film critic Adrian Martin)

Info Subtitles