TFD's Film Reviews

[TFD]

An offshoot of both Bullitt's and reanimator's threads. I've been meaning to start up a blog for film reviews but after having started another blog, don't really care to start a new one. The result is having a few written film reviews saved to my computer that I haven't done anything with. Hence this thread.

Also know that I wrote these without thinking about spoilers, so be warned.

Ikiru (1952) by Akira Kurosawa



I once relayed Ikiru’s synopsis to a friend of mine. My friend’s reply: “that doesn’t sound like anything I haven’t seen before.” The story about an old man who spends his last few days finding meaning in life certainly isn’t original and to some may feel slightly archetypal. But Ikiru is different. Directed by a man fully aware of his own mortality, Ikiru is a personal film that takes time to develop itself and in doing so becomes greater than the seeming simplicity of its theme.

The first time I saw Ikiru I thought it was slow, with conversations that I felt ran on too long and passages that I would have rather done without. But the more I watch it, the more I appreciate its pace. In taking his time with this film, Akira Kurosawa has achieved an effect that is very much like spending time with a friend, or in the case of Kanji Watanabe, someone who desperately needs one. I savored each scene upon subsequent viewings and each still moment, be it a break in conversation or a mundane composition, evokes apprehension of the inevitable and the immense burden the man carries in keeping it a secret.

What makes this a beautiful film is that Kanji Watanabe is a perfectly realized character. A man who realizes the brevity of his life when he learns he has terminal stomach cancer, his is one of the great character portrayals of the cinema. Everything about him emanates from reality. His redundant mechanical lifestyle most certainly was a byproduct for many people living under Japanese bureaucracy, and the passages detailing his distance from his son flow so naturally from that lifestyle. His cowering in the face of approaching death is tangible, reinforced by the sadness of specific events and the fear that he may spend the remainder of his life repeating such experiences if he does not make some effort to change his life.

Mr. Watanabe’s tale might not be so poignant were he not so endearing. Played by Takashi Shimura, he expresses traits that make him more than a depressed old man. He is also a timid man with little motivation or social connection. When he gets swept up in the apparent thrills of the nightlife, his awkwardness is humorous as he interacts with various bar patrons and women eager to dance. His comedic attachment to a new hat is also strangely sympathetic. These quirky moments breathe life into his character so that he is a true person and not simply a vehicle for a moralistic message. His lack of certainty and basic good nature that are revealed in these moments engage our hope that he finds himself before he dies.

And how does he find himself? It happens over a series of stages, not due to any generic convention of story telling. He goes from excessively drinking to pleasure seeking to vicariously living through another, and the end result is a matter of personal effort to do something. I find it remarkable how psychologically apt his progression is depicted, and even more remarkable still that the ultimate signifier of his transformation is a concrete action and not a vague change in character. When I make note that this film is a complex telling of an often-told story, these are the observations that fuel my reasoning.

But this poignant story cuts off as soon as Mr. Watanabe discovers that he would like to build a children’s park in place of a landfill that is a plague on the city. After making the decision to simultaneously commit a grand act of compassion for the benefit of those suffering within the community and circumvent the restrictive bureaucratic system he has managed his entire life, there is a jump in time to his funeral. This is Kurosawa’s brilliant intervention, that the fruits of Watanabe’s defining act of goodness may only be revealed to us with those attending his funeral, those who have no knowledge of the man’s quest to live a meaningful life.

It is not enough that we the audience are granted a satisfactory emotional payoff. We must experience it with those who are in the same position Watanabe himself was in at the beginning of the film, so that we may be aware of, at the least, the breathtaking reactions of awe it instills in them temporarily, and at the most, the inspiration it instills in one of them forever. The sad fact that such a beautiful discovery does not affect the majority of them indefinitely is ultimately a small loss compared to the beautiful change in the one man who was reached at the very depths of his heart.

And still, the most beautiful imagery in the film is found within the flashbacks recounted by the funeral attendees. There is the image of Watanabe in the rain fixated solely on his goal, the flock of admiring women behind him. There is the image of his face bathed in the sunlight as he looks out over the construction of his park, as one of the attendees says, like a grandfather watching his grandson. There is the image of him bent over and weak, viewed from the end of a long corridor, as he knocks on a door to make an appeal. There is the image of him descending the stairs after he delivers the poignant line, “I cannot afford to hate people; I don’t have that kind of time.” There is the image of the sunset, the pleasures of which he must forgo in order to finish his park.

And of course, there is that most famous of images of him on the swing. We begin distanced from him, peering at him through the jungle gym like a curious outsider. Then there is a cut and suddenly we see him in all his childlike happiness, swinging while, for one of the first times in the film, peering up into the sky. He is bathed in light and surrounded by little drops of snow. He sings his song about the brevity of life, paralleling an earlier scene in the film. But when at first he sang out of sadness, now he sings out of joy.

I would imagine that Kurosawa hoped that viewers of the film would remember these moments, so that they might walk away from the film like the one man who returned to the park, so that he may appreciate the labors of a man who learned to live a meaningful life, and strive to achieve that same fulfillment as he goes on to live his own.

[Bullitt68]

Of all of the Kurosawa films I've seen, it's pretty safe to say that I'm not a fan of his non-Samurai films at all. The only exception is I Live in Fear , which also features Shimura but stars Toshiro Mifune in his most underrated performance. If it's not his career best, it's certainly one of them.

I don't even need to ask if you think Ikiru qualifies as another exception of a great non-Samurai film, but I was just curious how you felt about his career in general and whether or not you agreed with me about not really prefering his non-Samurai films or if you think he's consistently great.

[TFD]

The only films of his I have seen are Rashomon, Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, and Ran. I suppose Ran is technically non-samurai but still fits with the more battle-oriented films of his. Ikiru is generally regarded as his best non-samurai film though. The thing about it is that it's slow, but once you watch the whole thing you realize you have just watched a masterpiece.

I'm hoping to get the Yojimbo/Sanjuro box set and High and Low soon, but I also eventually want Throne of Blood, Kagemusha, and Stray Dog. After I get those five, I'll probably gradually fill in the gaps in his filmography.

[Bullitt68]

For me, the films of his I've seen so far.

*Sanshiro Sugata

*Sanshiro Sugata II

*No Regrets for Our Youth

*Stray Dog

Rashomon

*I Live in Fear

Throne of Blood

The Hidden Fortress

*The Bad Sleep Well

Yojimbo

Sanjuro

*High and Low

Ran

*Non-Samurai films.

I'd rank his best as being Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, and Throne of Blood, and for his non-Samurai films, I didn't really like any except I Live in Fear, which I loved.

I'm also of the opinion that two of the three Western remakes of his films---John Sturges' remake of The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, and Sergio Leone's remake of Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars---surpass their Samurai counterparts.

Rashomon is the one film of his that far surpasses its Western remake and I think it's far and away his best.

Like I told you in a different thread (don't remember which one) TCM will be showing Kagemusha and Red Beard when they spotlight Kurosawa, so I'll check both of those out, and around that same time, since I'll be in Kurosawa mode, I'll try and pick up Ikiru, too, and when I do, I'll come back and see what I agree with and disagree with from your review.

[TFD]

Okay thanks a lot. Also I think I'm going to try to do the once a week thing too, so I'll have a different review up every Monday.

I'll be checking out Kagemusha for sure, but I may pass on Red Beard. It's hard for me to sit through multiple films in a row.

I have yet to see The Magnificent Seven, but one of my friends really loves it and could probably lend it to me, but I highly doubt I'll prefer it to The Seven Samurai.

[DrPepper21]

I have not seen Ikiru yet. Having just read through your review, I'm looking forward to doing so.

Having only seen Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo and if it's anything like those I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

[Bullitt68]

Originally Posted by TFD

I have yet to see The Magnificent Seven, but one of my friends really loves it and could probably lend it to me, but I highly doubt I'll prefer it to The Seven Samurai.

Both are fantastic and my preferring The Magnificent Seven isn't because of any glaring weaknesses in The Seven Samurai, but for me, I thought Sturges made the whole story a lot more intimate. I liked the epic nature of The Seven Samurai and it worked very well for the film, but on the same token, the smaller-scale, intimate nature of The Magnificent Seven worked very well for different reasons.

The biggest plus in my mind for The Magnificent Seven is I thought Sturges handled the conflict between the gunmen and the bandits much better than Kurosawa handled the conflict between the Samurai and the bandits. In The Seven Samurai, it's all about the Samurai and the villagers and the bandits are just nameless and faceless foes that ride in and fight a couple of times, but in The Magnificent Seven, Eli Wallach and his crew are introduced to us, we know them and are familiar with their history with the villagers, and once the seven gunmen come in, there's a sort of gamesmanship, a respectful adversarial dynamic that I thought was great and made all of the gunfights work so well.

And the score from Elmer Bernstein is one of the all-time great film scores IMO.

[TFD]

Hmm... Interesting. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing it now. Actually I'm pretty sure it's coming on on TCM sometime over the next few months. I may watch it then if I can't borrow it from my friend.

[Bullitt68]

When you started this thread, TFD, I jumped right into the review and started talking about Ikiru and Kurosawa, but now that I've read the prologue, if you will, I have a couple of questions.

1) Are you going to post reviews in any kind of order, be it chronological, genre, director, actor, etc?

2) How many films did you review on your blog? Are you going to post them all, and if so, are you first just going to get rid of all of your past reviews before writing new ones?

3) Do you have any interest in posting, in addition to your weekly reviews, what the following week's films will be?

[TFD]

Well, I was thinking of doing it without any order. The next week's film can be a complete surprise, coming from a drastically different time period, director, or genre. I had about five reviews written for the blog, with about six or seven more partially written. I'm not going to rewrite any of them, as I'm pretty happy with them and they were all written fairly recently. Also I feel that one review a week is a good pace for me even though I already have a good handful already written.

I rather like the idea of not hinting at the next week's film, but maybe later on down the line to give the thread more activity I could add an occasional written piece that might talk about a director, actor, genre, etc. at random points during the week.

Also I hope that I made it clear in the prologue, but the blog I already have has nothing to do with film.