Ikiru (生きる) (1952)

80 Pictures

8.5	Rating (465 ratings)
8.3	IMDB rating

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Directed by

Akira Kurosawa

Starring (View all)

Takashi Shimura
Kanji Watanabe

Shin'ichi Himori
Kimura

Haruo Tanaka
Sakai

Minoru Chiaki
Noguchi

Miki Odagiri
Toyo Odagiri, employee

Bokuzen Hidari
Ohara

Kamatari Fujiwara
Sub-Section Chief Ono

Nobuo Kaneko
Mitsuo Watanabe, Kanji's son

Written by (View all)

Akira Kurosawa
(written by)

Shinobu Hashimoto
(written by)

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Ikiru Videos

Criterion Trailer 221: Ikiru

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Added 16 years ago

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Reviews

How beautiful life is...

14 years, 7 months ago at Jul 2 20:10

Lexi

5 votes

''How tragic that man can never realize how beautiful life is until he is face to face with death.''

Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing...

Takashi Shimura: Kanji Watanabe

Ikiru(生きる, "To Live") is a 1952 Japanese film co-written and directed... read more

[Film] Ikiru (To Live)

17 years, 2 months ago at Dec 19 22:12

Hibiscus

3 votes

Unlike the previous two Kurosawa films I saw, this one doesn't set in ancient Japan, nor does it have any samurai in it. The modern setting (or as modern as it was back in 1950's) tells a story of an old man Kanji Wantanabe, played by Kurosawa's favourite leading man Takashi Shimura, who after spending most of his life working as the chief clerk in the city hall's Public Affairs department, finds ... read more

Review

9 years, 12 months ago at Mar 1 22:24

GigaBeer

1 vote

Masterpiece! Ikiru can hit you on an emotional level, but real power of this movie is that it will make you think about the way you live your life, about your work and decisions. I know that I'm thinking about all that now and that I probably won't change anything and end up like Kanji Watanabe. That makes me really sad...

View all Ikiru reviews

An aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer decides to strip the veneer off his existence and find meaning in his final days. Considered by some to be Akira Kurosawa’s greatest achievement, Ikiru offers a multifaceted look at a life through a prism of perspectives.

Release date: 25 March 1956
UPC: 037429180525

Tags: Japan (15), Drama (12), Japanese (12), 1950s (12), 1952 (11), Cancer (7), Death (7), Loneliness (6), Alcohol (4), Foreign Language (4), Foreign (4), Terminal Illness (4), Swing (3), Park (3), Sake (3), (3), Office (3), Asian (2), Kurosawa (2), East Asia (2)

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Kurasawa's most moving film

“As a great fan of Akira Kurasawa, Ikiru is not just Kurasawa's most moving film it is one of his very finest alongside Seven Samurai and Ran. It is as always beautifully made, sumptuous in look and the cinematography simple yet interesting. Kurasawa's direction is at its most delicate, making a story that could easily be mawkish and manipulative into a genuinely moving, powerful and quite inspiring one instead, and making us also care every step of the way for the dignified central character of Watanabe. Together with a hypnotic score, a thought-provoking script and a powerful, yet in a discreet and heart-wrenching way, lead performance from Takeshi Shimura, and you have a fantastic film.Overall, I can't praise Ikiru enough. Any complaints of how the final third is not as good as the rest ” read more