Ikiru ( Doomed ) ( Living )

Ikiru (DVD) (*)

~~$28.99~~ $22.97

Original Title: Doomed
Alternate Title: Living
Screened, competed or awarded at:
BAFTA Awards
Berlin International Film Festival
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
Japanese ( Mono )

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

Running Time:
143 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Featurette
Interactive Menu
Photo Gallery
Posters
Trailer(s)
Black & White

Movie filmed in 1952 and produced in:
Japan ( India, Eastern Asia )

Directed By:
Akira Kurosawa

Written By:
Akira Kurosawa
Shinobu Hashimoto

Actors:
Takashi Shimura ..... Kanji Watanabe
Shinichi Himori ..... Kimura
Haruo Tanaka ..... Sakai
Minoru Chiaki ..... Noguchi
Miki Odagiri ..... Toyo Odagiri, employee
Bokuzen Hidari ..... Ohara
Minosuke Yamada ..... Subordinate Clerk Saito
Kamatari Fujiwara ..... Sub-Section Chief Ono
Makoto Kobori ..... Kiichi Watanabe, Kanji's Brother
Nobuo Kaneko ..... Mitsuo Watanabe, Kanji's son
Nobuo Nakamura ..... Deputy Mayor
Atsushi Watanabe ..... Patient
Isao Kimura ..... Intern
Masao Shimizu ..... Doctor
Yûnosuke Itô ..... Novelist

Synopsis:

Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru details the existential struggle of one ordinary man in his desperate search for purpose. Upon learning he has terminal stomach cancer, a low-level government bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura) leaves his job of thirty years without a word to find meaning in the year he has left to live. He is completely alone in the world -- his wife is dead, his son is practically estranged, and his co-workers (the people with whom he has more contact than any others) are little more than strangers. Rather than face a death alone in pathos, Shimura opts to make up for lost time by going to the bar (for the first time in his life), spending every last yen in his wallet and drinking himself to death. There he meets a black-clad artist (a Mephistopheles to his Faust) who leads him on a hellish (and darkly humorous) tour of the city after dark as the two crawl through every booze-soaked juke-joint in town (Kurosawa's classical training as a painter surfaces in this sequence; many critics have noted the striking similarity of the crowded dance hall scenes to the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, (particularly Walpurgis Night). Realizing he has missed nothing, Shimura then sets his sight on a pretty young girl from the office to divert his attention from his looming mortality. Although the girl fails to serve as a lifebuoy, she does give him the inspiration to do something meaningful -- to leave a legacy, however small, that makes the world a better place. A synopsis of Ikiru cannot serve the film justice; it simply must be seen.

In a Post-War Tokyo, when the bureaucratic chief of department of the City Hall Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) finds that he has a terminal cancer, he decides to intensively live his last months of life. While dying, he finds the meaning of life, and fights for the construction of a playground in a poor zone of the city and the legacy of his existence.

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 13 June, 2006.

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