Ikiru

Watanabe doesn’t change. That’s what gets me. He doesn’t become brave or wise or kind. He’s the same cowardly, bent man in the last scene as in the first. He does one thing before he dies. One small thing. A park. Kurosawa shows me the people who knew him and who lost him didn’t understand what had happened to him. They got drunk and almost understood at his wake. But on Monday morning, they returned to their work and ignored him once more. But there’s the swing. There’s the snow. There’s a man who finally heard his own voice and decided that was enough. I think this is what the movie is about. Finding meaning in life. Just reaching for it once, in the last act of a lifetime.