Ikuru – BFI

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Miki Odagiri
Country: Japan
Running Time: 143 minutes
Year: 1952

Featuring a beautifully nuanced performance by Takashi Shimura as a bureaucrat diagnosed with stomach cancer, Ikiru is an intensely lyrical and moving film which explores the nature of existence and how we find meaning in our lives.

However you describe it, Ikuru seems trite and sentimental. Like something on a cheap US Hallmark channel; facing a terminal illness, a man resolves to do one thing. One last Good Thing. Coupled with it being an old Japanese movie, maybe this is one critically acclaimed opus to be tolerated. On the contrary, Ikuru is cinema at its most timeless and potent.

Steven Spielberg called director Akira Kurosawa ‘”the Shakespeare of our time”. You might naturally think that’s relevant because Kurosawa adapted Shakespeare into his Samurai films, but for me it’s his dramas. Ikuru especially is a sly, moral and sober view of humanity and ageing. While Kurosawa would become more widely known for genre pictures, somewhat rejected by his own country because of it, he steps into Ozu territory with this sharply observed family drama. Though one still presented with his eye for romanticised mise en scene.

The film is almost in two halves. The first shows our downtrodden weary bureaucrat, discovering he has cancer. He goes a little crazy, at least for him and his hitherto well-organised life. With a wide-eyed innocence, he enjoys a hedonistic last few months. But that’s not all he does. The second part is largely set at the wake, following his death (not a spoiler, honest), where his family and colleagues realise what he actually achieved. In flashback, we build scenes of him forcing, with quiet belligerence, an application for a children’s playground through the system that seemed designed to thwart it.

Ikuru, in both parts, is centred on a superlative and nuanced performance from Takashi Shimura. He starred in 21 Kurosawa films and it’s hard to pick his best, as it is for the director. This beautiful film might just be the one for both of them. The recent remake with Bill Nighy, retaining the English title To Live, is a fine film, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of the original. Ikuru has a touch of magic.

At the playground site, in a cacophony of noisy construction, dirt and dust, an ailing Watanabe stumbles. While his colleague watches dumbstruck, the local mothers -who were making the seemingly futile application in the first place- race to his side. Helped to a bench, he rests, as the ladies fuss around him. He takes a drink of water and gazes up. Tired, but still determined, the sun rests on his face and the noise of the site melts into the background… And for me there are few scenes so perfectly executed. Kurosawa had such a considerable, intelligent and moral grasp over everything, with nothing relying on chance, one step ahead of the audience throughout. Shakespeare indeed.

We shouldn’t forget, this is a lengthy drama about the building of a playground. That’s all that happens. But what it means, what it stands for, is a precise lesson in humanity presented as a narrative puzzle; in that, it is at least the equal of, say, Citizen Kane. As the pieces fall into place, via a sly, contradictory and indulgent last act, beware. Your heart might just burst.

VIDEO

This release from the BFI raises some challenging questions. Beautifully crisp, it has a little shimmer and there are artefacts, but this is an old film. More important is that it’s stable throughout, with a consistent grain and a rich contrast. Kurosawa always had a sense of depth to his images, here accentuated by expansive detail in the foreground. That’s now more apparent than in previous releases. This is an astonishingly good 4K transfer and the fact it is being presented on Blu-Ray doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe UHD would have pulled even more of a sense of depth, but frankly, this presentation is visibly better than some other UHD transfers of films from a similar era.

For such a wonderful, important film like Ikuru to be released looking this good on the more affordable format is a welcome treat.

EXTRA FEATURES

Akira Kurosawa’s films have been well presented in the past, especially in Criterion’s early days of DVD. The BFI’s choice of extras is relatively modest and typically eccentric. The real value in this package is that stunning restoration of the main film. However, the commentary is excellent, as is Alex Cox’s introduction. And I’m always impressed by the BFI’s ability to trawl their archive for a local angle. Here, we have a short film about a real campaign in the 1970s to secure a playground, plus a public information film about the Civil Service. Both strangely captivating and the last thing you’d find on other labels.

• Restored in 4K and presented in High Definition
• Audio commentary by film critic Adrian Martin
• Akira Kurosawa: It is Wonderful to Create – Ikiru (2002, 42 mins): made as part of the Toho Masterworks series and featuring interviews with Kurosawa, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami, writer Hideo Oguni, actor Takashi Shimura and others
• Introduction by Alex Cox (2003, 15 mins)
• It’s Ours Whatever They Say (1972, 39 mins): a community action film by Jenny Barraclough telling of the battle fought by a group of mothers against a London council to establish a playground for children on a derelict site
• The People People (1970, 22 mins): intended for school leavers, this COI film shows the vast range and variety of jobs available within the civil service, highlighting the ways in which civil servants help individuals, the community in general and Parliament
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• ***First pressing only*** Illustrated booklet with essays by Tony Rayns and James-Masaki Ryan, a review originally published in Monthly Film Bulletin in 1959, notes on the special features and film credit