A timeless masterpiece on universal themes . Imagine you found out you were going to die in a few months. What would you do? What would you decide mattered to you? What would you think you had accomplished? What would you consider left unaccomplished? What would you want your legacy to be?    Those are the questions facing the centeral character in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (meaning "To live"). The brilliant actor Takashi Shimura plays the role of Kanji Watanabe, a midlevel bureaucrat who has spent his entire career doing little more than protecting his own job by looking busy while actually accomplishing little. One day this man learns he has terminal cancer and will soon die. This revelation makes him start reviewing his life, and he concludes he has done nothing worthwhile. He tries to "live it up" with newfound friends and loose women, but this does not fulfill him. He cannot bring himself to tell his own son and daughter-in-law about his fate; caught up in their own petty problems, they seem to have little time for the old man. Eventually he meet a kind of kindred spirit, another worker at the bureaucracy who is quitting her job because she too feels she is doing nothing useful. But even she cannot help this poor man who needs love, fulfillment, a sense of purpose. And so Watanabe finds his own reason to go on through his final days, a reason centered around doing genuine good, regardless of the chance of reward. After he dies the glory all goes to lesser bureaucrats who, while previously fighting him every step of the way, now bask in the spotlight and claim the glory, paying him much lip service while denying him true honor.    Normally I don't give so detailed a plot description, but I've done so here for two reasons: 1) few people, particularly in America, have seen or even heard of this movie, and 2) I want to point out how universal the themes are, how this movie could easily be remade today in any other country with any other culture and any other cast. While watching Ikiru I kept thinking a good modern title might be, "The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same." Like so many Kurosawa films, this movie, though black and white and old, feels completely contemporary in its concerns and its content. While much has been made of Kurosawa's concern with the Japanese conflict between collective and individual, the issues in Ikiru resonates with any culture, not just Japan's. These bureacrats sound like the bureaucrats with which we all are familiar. This is a very deep film, filled with themes of existentialism that movies rarely tackle. It asks the biggest questions that can be asked of a life. At the same time, it never feels pretentious or preachy.    The story is complex, not in terms of plot twists, but in terms of its "inner life." Yet with a running time of two hours and 23 minutes, Ikiru moves very quickly, feeling faster than a typical 90-minute Hollywood film. This is probably because there is lots of ground to cover, and also because of the effortless acting. Takashi Shimura's performance as Watanabe is one of the greatest of cinema. Though Shimura is not widely known in the west, he was one of Japan's major actors of the 1950s and 60s, and Kurosawa worked with him often. See him in Kurosawa's Seven Samuri, made just two years after this film, for a completely different performance, one of swagger and bravado.     Other cast members are also outstanding, especially Miki Odagiri as a young female coworker. She too feels straitjacketed by her job as a government paper-pusher, but she is young and not tied down by responsibility and so she leaves. On a sort of date with Watanabe she confides that she has humorous names for everyone in the department based on how they behave, and that his is "The Mummy." Rather than be offended, he agrees with her and this insight helps to shape his vision of himself and what he must do to be redeemed.    It's hard to believe the same director who made such beautifully-composed samurai films also could direct contemporary dramas that look as effortless as this. Yet the film, or the third act of it, also reminded me of a very different motion picture--Citizen Kane, believe it or not. While stylistically the two masterpieces have little in common, both deal with a man, recently dead, who is being pieced together by those who knew him partially. They try to make sense of his actions without ever getting the full picture, while we, as the omniscent audience, do. They misunderstand his actions, and ascribe many to selfishness when they were actually exactly the opposite. (Often with Kane the reverse is true.) The only difference is while Watanabe is fundamentally a sympathetic character, Kane is not. Also, Kurosawa manages to tell his story without flashy technique or set pieces.    Ikiru also strangely foreshadows the life of a real Japanese hero of the second part of the 20th century, Yutaka Katayama (or "Mr. K," as he was called by many). Katayama was the head of Nissan Motor's West Coast division in North America in the 1960s and 70s. He was brought to the task when Nissan was a piddly carmaker of no consequence, especially in North America, which was then ruled by big, powerful Ford and GM cars. Though Katayama was not motivated by the thought of his impending death, he was hard-working and wanted to succeed in America, which he did through steady, unflagging determination. But he also went against the grain of Japanese business protocol, and encountered the wrath of his superiors in Tokyo. Ironically, the more successful he became, the more he was resented. (His far less aggressive and successful counterpart on the east coast was more highly regarded by the Japanese bosses.) After establishing Nissan as a major player in America, Katayama was unceremoniously retired as superiors moved in and took credit for his work. He died in obscurity, but today Mr. K is a revered figure at Nissan, and was even used in an advertising campaign several years ago. Executives now dislocate their jaws praising him. It all sounds too familiar.    The second DVD has two features, a 90 minute documentary from Kurosawa's own production company about his working methods, wherein he discusses everything from writing scripts to editing the final product; and a 40-minute feature about making Ikiru, with cast and crew interviews.  Both docs are excellent and you will watch Ikiru with more intelligence after you see them.  There's also the film's trailer and a commentary track which I confess I haven't had time to listen to.  It's by Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa.    Criterion once again is the standard to which all DVD makers should be aspiring. The print, while scratched and battered a bit with age, is as good as we're likely to see. It's unfortunate that for many years Kurosawa's work was not better taken care of. Like Nissan's Mr. K, he was without honor in his own country, because he was considered "too Western" in his outlook. Like Mr. K, his name now evokes nothing but praise in his homeland. Fortunately, the work of this "Mr. K" is finally being preserved. Ikiru is a film you should investigate even if you've never seen a Japanese movie before, even if you've never heard of Akira Kurosawa, even if you "hate" foreign or black and white films, even if you think you have no interest in the subject. Because that subject is in fact very modern and universal, and you will quickly be swept away by the relevance of the story. Ikiru is the very dictionary definition of the term "timeless classic.
Output: POS