IKIRU

The value of leading a life less ordinary. 

To contemplate life in the context of death can inch us towards a careless and panicked reality, where decisions are made on impulse and activities are done at haste. On the flip-side, contemplating life within the context of death has the ability to jolt us into action while thinking about the future that is beyond our waking days. 

Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (“To Live” if you translate the title to English) contemplates the purpose of an individual through an astute critique of everlasting trends in both the workplace and in the family home. It’s story employs tradition ingrained within a culture as a tool to reinforce the societal conflicts our hero has to overcome. However, as what could be expected of a Kurosawa film, the themes of the story are universal. Thinking about one’s death is something we are all capable of doing, and Ikiru’s journey of a man knowing he has not got long to live becomes an, albeit exaggerated, emotional guide that everyone can follow (if ever put in similar circumstances). 

The image of a sulking man in the dark or an old man’s face when sunlight catches him at the perfect moment become significant entries in our memory when death in a story is not a young martyr’s game. Within the context that Kurosawa’s film has built, precious minutes watching a man sit upon a swing can become the most powerful of images.

Death is a silent hope which can lead our being into action, yet, it suits human nature for there to exist a normality to do nothing.

Watched the BFI DVD on October 16th 2022. This piece was written on October 17th 2022.