• 生きる (Ikiru)

9/29/18 (Sat)

I hadn’t seen this 1952 classic in years, but with Miyamoto Amon’s Broadway-aimed musical version set to debut (in Japanese) next week, I figured it was time for a revisit. It didn’t strike me as an obvious choice for musicalization given the halting communication skills of the main character, who is not exactly Mr. Excitement, and I wondered how they could top the haunting “Gondola no Uta” that the man sings on the swing in the iconic finale. First, a look at the film.

Watanabe is a widower and career bureaucrat whose main accomplishment in 30 years of stamping papers is that he has never missed a day of work. His abrupt discovery that he has stomach cancer and some overheard comments – his colleagues joke about his uselessness, his son and daughter-in-law discuss their anticipated inheritance – make him reevaluate his life. He first thinks to make up for lost time by spending lots of money and partying hard, which only makes him more depressed. He then starts devoting days on end with a young girl who had been working in his department, hoping to soak up some of her energy and joy for life. When she tells him that her new job making toys makes her happy to think she is helping children, he comes to the realization that life is not about whiling away the time or relying on others but finding a purpose. Recalling the unanswered pleas of citizens for his office to convert a dilapidated piece of public land into a playground, he turns his energies to prodding the inert bureaucracy to action. That final phase of his life is revealed gradually in fragments after his death in the form of memories of those attending his funeral, who go from dismissal (the playground would have been built anyway) to reluctant acceptance (maybe he helped a little) to full recognition of his deeds. They pledge to follow his example, only to be shown back in the city office later with the same listless attitude toward citizens and their own work.

Ikiru means “to live”, a phrase that, in Japanese as in English, has connotations beyond just existing, as Watanabe learns over the course of the film. A profound meditation on why we are here, the movie has been described as one of the rare works that can actually change the viewer’s life, and for once I agree with the critics. The transformation of this mousy nobody into a man of passion and action is affecting and entirely believable in context. It recalls A Christmas Carol and It’s A Wonderful Life in giving the protagonist (and us) a new perspective on life, but without the supernatural element of those shows.

That’s not to say the film is perfect. It drags considerably in many cases: the scene in the doctor’s office is a clumsy and unconvincing setup for Watanabe’s revelation that he is going to die; the overextended section when Watanabe is visiting bars and clubs in search of excitement gets the point across long before the sequence ends; the entire mourning ceremony is unwieldy. The movie opens unnecessarily in retrospect as a voiceover tells us that Watanabe has stomach cancer, and much of the humor is belabored. Some serious pruning would be welcome. I suspect the film could be cut by 20-30 minutes with no loss of impact.

Nevertheless, there are moments of great beauty that make it all worth it. The highlight for me is the scene where Watanabe, having learned that he has only months to live but unable to tell anyone, crawls tearfully into bed. This is breathtakingly moving, an effect heightened as the camera pans to the certificates on the wall commemorating his many years of service in his job. The mourning ceremony, for all its undue length, also includes sublime portraits of Watanabe’s dogged pursuit of his dream, an unstoppable force versus a seemingly immovable bureaucracy – personally meeting the citizens, inspecting the site himself, crossing departments to urge action, shockingly challenging his superiors and more, all in clearly deteriorating health. The impressionistic presentation of the mourners’ recollections, reminiscent in a way of Kurosawa’s previous film Rashomon, slowly but surely fills out the picture of Watanabe like some big jigsaw puzzle, and the final heartrending image of him on the swing, singing about the brevity of life, is justly famous.

Kurosawa has made adroit use of music. Western songs include Nat King Cole’s rendition of “Too Young” (when the mother’s tragically early death is revealed, commenting equally on Watanabe’s early widowhood), “Come On-A My House” (sung by the bored girls that Watanabe and his guide have picked up), and most notably “Happy Birthday”, sung ostensibly to a random woman in a restaurant but coming just as Watanabe gets the inspiration that will drive the rest of his short life.

For all that, none of these beat the wonderful “Gondola no Uta”, a Japanese song popular in the 1920s, an era known as a romantic interlude but only a fading pre-war memory at this point. The elegiac lyrics represent words of wisdom from an old man advising young girls not to waste their fleeting youth (“Life is brief / Fall in love, maidens / Before the crimson bloom / Fades from your lips”). Watanabe sings this the first time when he is out on the town, asking the pianist to play it in a Casablanca moment. As he sings wistfully, the partiers gradually fall silent, bringing the words and sentiment into gorgeous focus. Kurosawa manages to top that with a reprise of the song in that iconic last scene in the park that he brought to life, itself a memory being related after Watanabe’s death by someone who had witnessed it. The recollected image of the terminally ill man swaying in the snow on the children’s swing and singing of the ephemeral nature of life is one of the great, great moments of cinema.

Shimura Takashi, taking on a markedly different role from his parts in Rashomon and The Seven Samurai (the films immediately before and after this one – Kurosawa was on a roll), is near perfect as Watanabe. His touching scene in the bed after learning of his disease was noted above, and his quiet determination when he resolves to get the park built is superbly played. The acting overall is very fine, especially Odagiri Miki as the young woman who inspires him and Shinichi Himori as the one colleague who defends Watanabe at his funeral.

The musical version, a first for a Kurosawa film (not counting an unofficial Rashomon-inspired effort that transferred much of the action to New York), will have script and lyrics by a Japanese writer, Chikae Takahashi, and music by American Jason Howland (Little Women). That is a curious approach given the stark differences between the languages; Japanese would normally require completely different musicalization than English. I wonder if Howland is composing from the English translation. The creators are openly hoping to take this to Broadway, so this hybrid approach could make life difficult for them down the road.

In any case, the film offers several obvious scenes for musicalization: the opening where the citizens are given the runaround in the city office, Watanabe’s trip to the wild side, the varying observations by the mourners at the memorial service. The question will be how they musicalize the largely taciturn Watanabe, whose key problem throughout the film is an incapability of expressing himself to others. He does sing in the movie, of course, and both instances are highlights. But part of the effect comes from the fact that he is so reserved otherwise. Also, that song is a piece of nostalgia that indirectly reflects his state of mind. My sense is that too much singing, especially in the overly knowing Sondheim-like manner so beloved of modern musical composers, will dilute the impact and spell out what is vividly clear just in Watanabe’s expressive eyes. I will be curious to see what they come up with.

I just hope they don’t overly sentimentalize the material, a trap Kurosawa adeptly avoided. Watanabe is being played oddly by two major musical stars on alternate days, which should make for an interesting comparison. Performances begin in Tokyo on October 8.