Review of Ikiru (1952) by Noel V — 15 May 2010

For the longest time, my favorite Kurosawa. Then it and its maker dropped from my radar.

Seeing it again after so long, I'm struck again with fresh force by its passionate cry, its title--surely the most ironic in all of cinema (this after all isn't all about how to live, but how to die). The endless layers of visual motifs, from the X ray that opens the picture to the ridiculously extravagant hat to the picture of Watanabe and its inscrutable expression (is he happy? Resigned? Grinning perhaps, at some unknowable joke?).

Then there's the sway of the beaded curtains at the bar just before he sings his song, the sway of the swing as he reprises that song, the swing, this time ridden by children, as the melody is reprised one last time--a final push by the very young, before the swing is abandoned, its to-and-fro motion allowed to die down forever--or at least for the day.

It's a visual signal that perfectly encapsulates what the film's all about: entropy, the eventual end to all life, the ultimate heat death of the universe--at the same time a gentle, unutterably lovely expression of life in defiance of that death. Jesus Christ, this film only gets stronger, the older you get.