Word: ikiru
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Ikiru begins with an aging civil service employee's discovery that he has a fatal case of gastric cancer. The narrative twists through some five months, ending just after his death. The plot and characters are common place and simple. The film is an unpretentious Japanese story of a no more momentous event than the quiet death of an old man who has spent most of his life rubber-stamping documents no one cares about. Yet Ikiru is a powerful film, well worth the cost of a ticket and the time away from the books...
...Ikiru describes a death occuring over the space of five months. But literally translated, the title means "to live." Watanabe's last day would be the final entry in a plot summary, but skillful use of flashback makes possible a switch between the presentations of his death and the struggle for the park, Ikiru's last scene is not Watanabe dead, but Watanabe watching children in the park he has forced through city hall. It is a very moving ending to a superbly acted and photographed film...
...IKIRU. Japan's Akira Kurosawa has produced the year's most deeply moving film, the story of a pathetically ordinary man who begins to live only when he begins...
...Ikiru (Japanese). The story of an obscure, undistinguished man who is dying of cancer and whose search for goodness at the end of life makes a distinguished, brutally ironic film...
...Ikiru (Japanese). A man tries to do good before he dies, succeeds, and brutally ironic agonies follow. Perhaps the finest achievement of Director Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa...