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Ikiru
Sign in to saveis a 1952 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) and his final quest for meaning. The screenplay was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
OverviewAI-generated
*Ikiru* is a 1952 Japanese black-and-white drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The screenwriters include Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni, with Sōjirō Motoki serving as producer. The cast features Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Bokuzen Hidari, and Kamatari Fujiwara. Fumio Hayasaka composed the music, Asakazu Nakai was the director of photography, and Kurosawa also handled the film editing. Produced by Toho, the movie is based on *The Death of Ivan Ilyich* and is set in Tokyo.
The film has a runtime of 143 minutes and was released on October 9, 1952. It was distributed by Toho and Netflix in video on demand format. The main subjects of the story are old age and stomach cancer. *Ikiru* has received various ratings, including an IMDb score of 8.3, a Metascore of 92, and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 98%. It was nominated for one BAFTA Award and has accumulated six wins and two nominations in total.
Synthesized by Vinony from 47 facts across 5 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, OMDb, IMDb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film · TMDB
8.3Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Cast
- Takashi Shimura as Kanji Watanabe
- Haruo Tanaka as Sakai
- Nobuo Kaneko as Mitsuo, son of Kanji
- Bokuzen Hidari as Ohara
- Miki Odagiri as Toyo
- Shinichi Himori as Kimura
Themes
- dying and death
- japan
- bureaucracy
- age difference
- praise
- office
- night life
- sense of life
- playground
- obsequies
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Ratings
IMDb
8.3/10
100,520 votes
Rotten Tomatoes
98%
Metacritic
92/100
- Year
- 1952
- Runtime
- 143 min
- Genres
- Drama
- Rated
- Not Rated
- Awards
- Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award6 wins & 2 nominations total
via OMDb · IMDb
Key facts
- Film.name
- Ikiru
- Film.image
- Ikiru poster.jpg
- Film.caption
- Theatrical release poster
- Film.director
- Akira Kurosawa
- Film.producer
- Sōjirō Motoki
- Film.music
- Fumio Hayasaka
- Film.cinematography
- Asakazu Nakai
- Film.studio
- Toho
- Film.distributor
- Toho
- Film.runtime
- 143 minutes
- Film.country
- Japan
- Film.language
- Japanese
via Wikipedia infobox
~14 min read
Encyclopedic overview
14 sectionsContents
- Plot
- Cast
- Themes
- Meaning of Life
- Bureaucracy
- Family life
- Production
- Release
- Critical reception
- Accolades
- Legacy
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
is a 1952 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) and his final quest for meaning. The screenplay was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
The film's major themes include learning how to live, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, and decaying family life in Japan, which have been the subject of analysis by academics and critics. It won awards for Best Film at the Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Film Awards and is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time. Ikiru is regarded by some as Kurosawa's masterpiece alongside Seven Samurai.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ikiru” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.