Ikiru

"Just to get a garbage can emptied out somewhere, you need enough paperwork to fill another garbage can." Ikiru follows a very simple and somewhat classical premise that doesn't stand out much these days: a man being confronted by his mortality and introspecting on how pointless his life has been. On the surface it's easy to understand, empathize, and move on and I think that's exactly why this movie shines so much. It does an amazing job of actually getting you to feel the uneasiness this man feels in every waking moment as he laments how listlessly he has lived. Bureaucracy has sucked the life out of Watanabe and he can't even remember the kind of passion he used to have when he became a civil servant. It's a very brazen criticism of how slow and scattered the system is and the kind of people who work in it through a man whose voice is hoarse with pain. Even at the funeral, the officials could not restrain themselves from posturing until the Deputy Mayor(major dickhead) had left. The choice to show that nothing had truly changed even after the men's change of heart at the funeral was very iffy to me. I suppose in the end movies like this cannot truly change how things are and that's a note Kurosawa intended to portray in its full honesty. Characters like Kimura still preserve the more hopeful, if naive outlook with how things can still change. Also I'd be remiss not to mention how unbelievably chill Odagiri was. I mean she didn't even know the dude had cancer. Saw him make one joke out of character and decided they were besties for the day. Even decided to cut things off when she decided it was getting weird( after showing some heart mind you) and didn't even show up to the funeral. Incredibly based character. Japanuary 2026 #4 (Akira Kurosawa)