How Ikiru will stir the mummy in all of us
Submitted by Andrew Calvin

I was visited the other night by a haunting and beautiful spirit. It spoke to me through my TV and told me to take a good long look at what I had done and what I wanted to do and whether quite frankly I was making any sort of presence here on this great big ball of life. That very spirit was an old, black and white film called Ikiru. This is all silly though isn’t it? To be moved by something as simple as a movie. You’re right, Ikiru is just a movie, but within that masterful narrative and deep characterization are reflections of us all. Ikiru is, at its core, a call to arms for those who sit idly by and let fate take the wheel.

For the first time in a long time I looked at my life to this point and questioned it down to the very core. Most people do this after accidents, or maybe losing someone dear. Sometimes it just happens because of the mish-mash of chemicals inside all of us. Regardless of the reason, it happens. On the verge of being 30, I looked back. Where did the last decade go? And for that matter, what about the years before that? It’s all a blur. A day-to-day slow numbing of our sharpest wits, and we accept it most times because we don’t even notice it. All this because I decided to unwind with a film before bed.

Free will is our greatest gift, yet we suppress it. We work our whole lives just to hopefully retire one day. Takashi Shimura is no different. He plays the character Kanji Watanabe, Public Affairs Section Chief in Tokyo City Hall. For something like 30 years he has tirelessly stamped papers, keeping everything moving and accomplishing nothing. We find out from the very frank narrator that inside him is a raging stomach cancer. The protagonist soon finds this out too. We see with unfiltered lenses all that there is to Watanabe and all that there isn’t. He is going to die. And it is here that master visionary Akira Kurosawa could have done the Hollywood thing. Maybe Watanabe didn’t have cancer after all. It could all be a mistake. But of course it isn’t. Kurosawa wouldn’t devalue his viewers in such a way.

Watanabe reacts like any of us might. He counters thenews with sorrow, grief, anguish. He skips work and withdraws even further from his son (who lives with him). He turns to sake to drown his sorrows. It is at this small bar where he meets one of two characters that will profoundly affect him. Watanabe looks to an ordinary novelist to show him how to spend some of the money he has been hording for years. They tear through the night like a couple of college kids. Later in the evening, at some club teeming with youth, he asks a pianist to play an old love song from the 20s. This haunting melody plays off and on throughout Ikiru and sets the somber tone of the film.

Later Watanabe is reunited with a young girl who worked in Public Affairs with him. He becomes almost obsessed with her. It’s her life that he craves. The very essence of being alive that pumps through her and fills him with hope. “I have less than a year to live. When I found that out...somehow I was drawn to you. Once when I was a child, I almost drowned. It's just like that feeling. Darkness everywhere, and nothing for me to hold onto, no matter how hard I try. There's just you.”

And eventually, Watanabe dies. Part of me was hoping, deep down, that he wouldn’t have to. That Kurosawa taught us enough about life and how Watanabe used his final months to create a beautiful park, despite grumbles and groans at City Hall (actually accomplishing things isn’t part of the plan you see!). Part of me said, this is enough, he’s done more than enough to right his wrongs, so just cue happy ending and let me go to sleep in peace. After reflecting on the film, mulling it over in my head at work, it slowly took hold of me and had me thinking like no film has in years. I realized I had watched one of only a handful of films I probably will in my lifetime that can have such an effect. So I savored it and held on that feeling of unease as long as I could. But like many of the characters in the film, most of us will once again move on and forget who we are and what we are capable of. But hopefully by that time, something else will come along to stir the mummy in all of us.

Ikiru is a testament to not only the beauty of film, but the very essence of Asian filmmaking. Most of us who are drawn to Asian film (and I know it’s rather silly to lump all Asian countries and their films together) understand that they have a certain sensibility we don’t see elsewhere. This is reflected in Ang Lee’s Oscar win this year and it is reflected every time film fans turn to Japan or Korea or China or Thailand, among others, for a chance to have film not only visually entertain but to emotionally challenge us as well.

The ending of Ikiru is perhaps one of the most amazing I have ever seen (yet still doesn’t replace my favorite Asian film ending, Fallen Angels). Once you see it, you’ll understand what I mean. It represents the perfect harmony of both hope and despair and it is this very sentiment that has always drawn me, and will forever continue to pull me, to Asian films.

 

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