Akira Kurosawa uses the camera to distance himself from his subject. In Ikiru, the camera serves as the mirror to his soul. Ikiru is the subtly poignant and heartbreaking story of Kanji Watanabi (Takashi Shimura), a middle aged government bureaucrat who has been diagnosed with terminal gastric cancer. Realizing that he has squandered his life […]
A radio broadcast issues a public service announcement reminding listeners of the third anniversary memorial service for the victims of the Ark of Truth cult disaster, a biological terrorist attack that introduced a genetically engineered virus into the nation’s water supply, leading to the deaths of 128 people and an additional 8,000 illnesses. A quiet […]
Early Monday morning, four overworked, dedicated counselors are given a motivational speech by their supervisor in preparation for the week’s heavy caseload. A distant bell tolls, and one by one, people emerge from the fog into an empty station, declare their names to an unseen receptionist, and bide their time in the waiting room before […]
An elderly woman (Kikuko Hashimoto) abstractedly walks down the sidewalk of a high traffic bridge, as she often does, determined to return to her childhood village. Her granddaughter chases after her, imploring her to come home, but she continues to walk on. When evening comes, the grandmother’s idiosyncratic ritual becomes cause for concern when she […]
In a time of sustained peace, the powerful daimyo (feudal warlords) have become resigned to an existence of pointless exercises and petty bureaucracy in a determined effort to retain privilege and curry favors from Edo. In an attempt to stave off boredom, Lord Matsudaira’s (Tatsuo Matsumura) seasoned swordsman, Isaburo Sasahara (Toshirô Mifune) and his trusted […]
The retainer log book for the Official Residence of Lord Iyi reports that at midday on an otherwise uneventful day on the thirteenth of May 1630, during the absence of the Honorable Heir Bennosuke, a gaunt, former retainer of the Lord of Geishu arrives at the mansion gates and is granted an interview with the […]