Review – Ikiru

Funny how a phrase as grandiose as “triumph of the human spirit” seems so often apt to describe quiet little movies like this. Early in his career, Akira Kurosawa serves up the story of a bureaucrat who learns he has terminal stomach cancer. He spends the first half of the movie moping, feeling sorry for himself, and otherwise trying to come to grips with his fate. Then the production fast-forwards to his funeral, where his fellow paper-pushers reminisce about his efforts to get a park built. Slowly they come to realize that the park construction wasn’t merely an exercise in inter-office turf battling but rather an expression of his love of life. Such a summary is accurate enough but nonetheless inadequate to cover the sweet, subtle nuance of the picture. Buy the disc