I Live in Fear ( Ikimono no kiroku ) ( Record of a Living Being )

I Live in Fear (DVD) (*)

~~$29.99~~ $23.97

Original Title: Ikimono no kiroku
Alternate Title: Record of a Living Being
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Cannes Film Festival

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
Japanese ( Mono )

Product Origin/Format:
Australia ( PAL/Region 4 )

Running Time:
99 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Black & White

Movie filmed in 1955 and produced in:
Japan ( India, Eastern Asia )

Directed By:
Akira Kurosawa

Written By:
Akira Kurosawa
Shinobu Hashimoto
Fumio Hayasaka

Actors:
Toshirô Mifune ..... Kiichi Nakajima
Takashi Shimura ..... Domestic Court Counselor Dr. Harada
Minoru Chiaki ..... Jiro Nakajima
Eiko Miyoshi ..... Toyo Nakajima
Kyôko Aoyama ..... Sue Nakajima
Haruko Togo ..... Yoki Nakajima
Noriko Sengoku ..... Kimie Nakajima
Akemi Negishi ..... Asako Kuribayashi
Hiroshi Tachikawa ..... Ryoichi Sayama
Kichijiro Ueda ..... Mr. Kuribayashi father
Eijirô Tono ..... Old man from Brazil
Yutaka Sada ..... Ichiro Nakajima
Kamatari Fujiwara ..... Okamoto
Ken Mitsuda ..... Judge Araki
Masao Shimizu ..... Yamazaki, Yoshi's husband (as Gen Shimizu)

Synopsis:

When an elderly, wealthy man decides that nuclear holocaust is eminent in his country, he decides to move his family to Brazil at all costs--a place which, for some mysterious reason, he believes to be safe. His family refuses to move because they fear that the move will jeopardize their financial well-being. Nakajima burns down his foundry to force them to go to Brazil but, instead, they go to the courts and have him declared mentally incompetent. After several more increasingly irrational acts, he is finally placed in a mental asylum, where he sits staring at the sun, believing that he is on another planet and the sun is the raging inferno created by the Earth when it went up in the nuclear holocaust--vindicating his actions. A strong indictment against the inherent evils of nuclear warfare, it is also the story of a man's love and dedication to his family in the face of his own fears and endangerment.

Obsessed with the constant threat of nuclear holocaust, wealthy foundry owner Nakajima (Toshiro Mifune) decides to move his entire family to Brazil but meets with strong resistance when his children realise their inheritance would be severely diminished. They retaliate by applying to the family court to judge him mentally incompetent and family squabble of unusual proportions ensues. Though civil servant Harada (Takashi Shimura) empathises with Nakajima he becomes powerless to help the old man when the struggle is not only with a cold-hearted family, but against insanity itself. Filmed at the height of the Cold War, when the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still in recent memory, I Live in Fear is both an important film from one of the world's finest directors, and a biting social commentary that retains its relevance today.

This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 09 August, 2006.

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