Kurosawa special: #79 Ikiru, #18 Rashomon

Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)

Ikiru is the most well known of Kurosawa films that takes place in present day. The main character is a government worker who's wasting his life quietly playing the beaurocracy to protect his own place in it. He finds out he has stomach cancer (Which in the 1950s was a death sentence), and he goes out to try learn how to start experiencing his life before he dies.

In the film, government beaurocracy is presented cynically and satirically. There's a neighborhood of people who want to fill in a local cesspool and build a playground over it. (This might be the inspiration for the show Parks and Recreation). Nobody wants to handle it. No matter what government office they go to, the clark there says it's the business of some other department. Nobody is interested in accomplishing anything in their job or making anyone's life better. Everybody knows the trick: If you do nothing, you will stay where you are. It's not until the main character knows he's dying that he realizes this is a waste of time.

In the first half of the film, he tries to connect with his family, and he tries to learn how to party like the young people. He's not feeling any of it, and characters while charmed by him at first get freaked out when he tries to cling to them. Finally he goes back to work, making the decision that instead of just wasting his time, he's going to use his position to try to get something done. The project he chooses is to build the playground. He pulls all the right strings, goes against his bosses, perseveres and forces people to summon the will to pull the project through. In the last hour of the film, he's dead, and his coworkers are musing on his behavior in the last few months.

The movie presents some very good satire about the way we live our lives, bordering on the preachy now and then. The first half of the film can be a little long winded. The second half of the film is long, but it needs to be in order to pace the man's coworkers' gradual realization of how much they posthumusly admire him. I think it can be a little philosophically one sided. Playing the game to protect your career and living your life to it's fullest potential aren't always mutually exclusive in the real world.

Rating: *** 1/2 / 5

Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)

Rashomon is one of the earliest films to present a narrative in terms of different characters' different perspectives about an event, rather than just showing the event itself. The facts of the event are clear. A bandit rapes a woman and kills her husband. The bandit, the wife, and the husband (Through a psychic medium) all present their version of the story. Each of them tells a completely different story about the rape and murder, and each tells a story which flatters himself or herself.

Up to the point of the rape, all the stories are the same. That's when they diverge. The bandit tells a story about an honorable fight for the heart of his wife. The wife tells a story about trying to kill herself in shame, until the husband kills himself out of his shame. The dead husband tells a misogynist story about his shamed wife begging the bandit to kill him, then killing himself to save his honor. After the three stories come out, we find out the man who found the body witnessed the whole thing, and he tells a story where all three come off terribly.

The film takes place in 16th century Japan, in a time of extreme poverty where death and murder are commonplace. The main narrative takes place with three men stuck in a rain storm, discussing the events of the rape and murder. One character is a priest, who wants to see the good in mankind, and can't believe a crime like this could happen. He's trying to hold onto his faith in humanity even in such a horrible time. Another character is a misanthropist who sees the human race as animals who will cut each others' throats to survive, and isn't surprised at all by the crime. The third, the witness, is trying to process it all and understand how people could behave this way. The film analyzes the question of whether it's possible to keep your faith in humanity, even knowing the horrible things humans can do.

Rating: ***** / 5

74/101