Ikiru (1952)

Original title

生きる

Directed by

Akira Kurosawa

Genre

drama film

Country

Japan

Runtime

2h 23m

Rated

NR

Rating

8.3 of 10 from 1,360 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat searches for meaning in his final days. He struggles with the emptiness of his work and his strained family relationships.

movingsolemnintrospectivequietcontemplativetendermelancholicgentlepoignant

What happens

Ikiru (生きる; 'To Live') is a 1952 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) and his final quest for meaning. The screenplay was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The film's major themes include learning how to live, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, and decaying family life in Japan, which have been the subject of analysis by academics and critics. It won awards for Best Film at the Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Film Awards and is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time. Ikiru is regarded by some as Kurosawa's masterpiece alongside Seven Samurai. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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