Ikiru
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Cast
Takashi Shimura
as Kanji Watanabe
Haruo Tanaka
as Sakai
Nobuo Kaneko
as Mitsuo, son of Kanji
Bokuzen Hidari
as Ohara
Miki Odagiri
as Toyo
Shinichi Himori
as Kimura
Minoru Chiaki
as Noguchi
Minosuke Yamada
as Subordinate Clerk Saito
Kamatari Fujiwara
as Sub-Section Chief Ono
Makoto Kobori
as Kiichi Watanabe, Kanji's Brother
Reviews
CinemaSerf
Takashi Shimura is "Watanabe", an elderly civil service lifer who is told that he has terminal stomach cancer. After years of a disciplined, rather pedestrian existence he now feels a need to emancipate himself and start to live a little. The story is told through two threads: one looks at the end o...
Peter McGinn
I watched the English follow-up version (Living) before watching this original, and wished I had reversed my order. I liked Living much more than this original, but since both were written by the same Japanese scriptwriter, my preference might be cultural rather than due to quality issues, not to me...
badelf
Typical Kurasawa creative framing in the beginning of the movie. The scene of dancers shot through bead curtains swinging in time to the music was brilliant. His choice of Miki Odagiri for muse is brilliant. Her laugh is infectious. The last act stuck me as rather static. It's perhaps from cultural...
