Ikiru (To Live)
Kurosawa Akira1952
Class Notes
Week 10
Humanism
Ikiru (To Live)
Kurosawa Akira
1952
Characters
Watanabe Kanji: An elderly widowed public official
Mitsuo: His son
Mitsuo’s wife
Toyo: A woman who works with Watanabe and wants to resign to work in a factory where they make toy rabbits.
Ono: Asst. Chief in the department where Watanabi works.
A writer who takes Watanabe on a "tour"
Terms
Point of view: From where is the image generated?
Subjectivity: Whose narrative is it?
Omniscient: “all knowing”
Shishosetsu: A kind of novel (sometimes called the “I-Novel”) written as a confession
Brecht: A writer who felt art should not be accepted uncritically. Theater should alter and better world conditions (whatever that means). Characters in his work should produce understanding not empathy. Understanding leads to action.
BEFORE THE FILM
Many of the film makers have indicated some hostility to the feudal aspects of Japanese society as well as “Westernization” especially its stress on money, material things and so on, Many Japanese intellectuals and artists embraced a socialist/communist ideology, and were unhappy that post war Japan was not headed in that direction. There are some artists like Mishima Yukio, who were more right wing than left and interested in restoing (sort of) the emperor to power. Both of these raise interesting questions about just what constitutes a culture, a problem which unfortunately we can not examine in detail here, although they clearly reflect heavily on the ideology of the films.
Plot and Theme
The plot revolves around an officials attempt to get a park built for a community before he dies. This is to give some meaning to his life.
Film Techniques
The film is divided into 2 parts. The first dealing largely with Watanabe and his reaction to learning he has terminal cancer, and the second to his family and coworkers response to his death. The second takes place in a restricted place and time and Watanabe appears only in flashbacks.
Questions of Point of View and Subjectivity are important parts of the analysis of almost any film. Some films are from the point of view of an “omniscient” narrator. The viewer sees and knows more (and sometimes less) than any character in the film. Complete identification with a single character is possible but rare. Classic examples are Lady in the Lake and The Innocents. In this film Ikiru there is a great deal about the nature of both the films point of view and subjectivity.
The film looks at two issues: how do people confront death and the meaning of their own lives and secondly, how do the friends and family account for changes that might have occurred in the behavior of a person just prior to their deaths.
The film’s narrative structure is complex, and questions of point of view are foregrounded. Watch for ellipsis, montage, flashbacks, voice over narratives and cuts. How does the film open? What can you say about the opening sequence?
Watanabe’s meeting with the writer in the bar. What does it mean that he is a writer? What is the purpose of the conversation?
What is Watanabe’s relationship with others in the film – especially the writer, Toyo, his some, and his son’s wife?
What do these people and relationships represent?
Montages:
There are several montages in the film. How are they handled? Are they effective?
Action and Subjectivity
What is the purpose of distancing us from Watanabe? How do sympathy and action differ? Does this film avoid sympathy for Watanabe since that is no more than feeling or identifying with him the way he did with Toyo
AFTER THE FILM
The film poses questions about confronting death and the meaning of life.
The meaning of life is connected to what we believe about life. The next generation down is more interested in western goods and money
The democratization of Japan seems to have simply produced meaningless bureaucracies with no humanistic feelings. The government does not respond to people, and is not positively viewed by Kurosawa.
Clearly Kurosawa like Mishima are interested in a kid of selective borrowing, but as Kobayashi implies in Ningen no Joken, this is not quite possible. His view of people as bad is not the same as Kurosawa’s view of people, but both seem interested in transplanting some aspects of a political or social philosophy from one culture onto another.
Watanabe and Others
His relationship with his son and daughter in law:
General unhappiness about westernization. Stress on money etc. Kurosawa is hostile also to the old feudal values of Japan.
Toyo: Likes her enthusiasm and involvement. Can not simply identify and feel useful.
Office staff: After “epiphany” realizes that they do nothing. (Point of joke)
Watanabe’s talk with the writer (a kind of stereotypic Shishosetsu writer) constitutes a kind of soul searching. His revelation at last to someone that he is dying is not the crucial piece – the real secret is that his life is meaningless. He has nothing to confess.
Death
Death is a kind of unreality that occurs only to other people. When one confronts one’s own death, there are problems. When is it coming? Are you ready for Watanabe’s death when it comes? Does it take you as much by surprise as it does him?
Culture
Is western culture at fault here? There are string indications that Kurosawa is not willing to place all the blame there. The feudal structure of Japan that leads to strict hierarchical organization is also at fault – perhaps moreso
Film Techniques
The film uses a number of techniques to keep the audience from identifying with any one point of view. There is constant slippage between what we see and think we know and what turns out to be the case. Watanabe vanishes and other try to account for his absence. We are given multiple viewpoints as in Rashomon, but without multiple narratives.
The opening shots. What is the first thing we see and hear? An X ray with an “omniscient” narrator, explaining that it is the stomach of the main character who has cancer but doesn’t yet know it. This voice over is in and of itself not odd, but there is a question about where the X- ray comes from since Watanabe does not know yet he has cancer. Hence the existence of the X-ray can not be explained diegetically. The words(according to the writer Yoshimoto) are easier to accept than an X-ray, thereby separating the sound from the visual.
Another sequence that is complex and shows a good example of an ellipsis is the sequences showing the people being moved from one place to another in the office building. When the sequence finishes, we are back at Watanabe’s office, but he people are told he is not there that day. What has appeared to be a set of events in a single day is now clearly a set of events over several days. Time is collapsed, and the attempts of the people to find someone to talk to who can do something is clearly more complex than might have been initially involved.
The time problem is important since time is a serious element in the film as well. Watanabe’s time is limited. He does not know exactly how long he has, nor does he know how long the project will take.
Yoshimoto points out that right from the start Watanabe is denied the “point of view” in the film. In the sequence which occurs early in the film Watanabe, at his desk, looks up when a woman laughs. The camera then shows the entire office with Watanabe in the background. He third shot, like the first shows him at his desk, taking off his glasses, while the next shows the whole office again with him taking off his glasses (match on action) and Toyo standing up. The camera moves 90 degrees (match on action of her standing up) .The camera moves again 90 degrees and is now behind Watanabe as Toyo sits. Finally Watanabe is shown from the front at his desk.
Watanabe’s gaze and that of the camera do not match.
There are shots that do imply Watanabe’s subjectivity: the lack of sound when he leaves the hospital and his being jolted back to reality by the sound of the truck.
The view of the dark house shown as though Watanabe is approaching it, turns out not to be Watanabe, but his son and daughter in law.
Montage
Relives moments in his life in which death happened or could happen to people around him, but not him – his wife’s funeral, his son’s appendectomy, Mitsuo leaving for war.
Action and Subjectivity
How is this film “Brechtian”?
Does this film deliberately avoid sympathy for Watanabe by denying him the point of view in the film or allowing his subjectivity to be dominant? That is no more than causing the audience to feel or identifying with him the way he did with Toyo nefore he is galvanized into action. The film wants to motivate the audience to action not just remain passive identifying with Watanabe in some way.
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