I wrote the majority of this essay hyped up on coffee while listening to Rush the day before it was due. I ended up getting a B+ overall in the class so I guess that means this paper can't be THAT bad. I'm sure its way to long for anyone to read in this format though. We had to do a scene analysis for a movie of our choice so I picked a scene from the movie "Ikiru".
The scene I chose is at 22:53 at this link
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10h1gk_ikiru-1952-pt-2_creation
“He is simply passing time without really living his life - in other words he is not really alive.” (Ikiru). These are the words used to describe the protagonist, Watanabe, in Kurosawa’s film “Ikiru”. This is said by the narrator early on in the film at a point in Watanabe’s life where he does not yet know that he is terminally ill. He is working at a job that requires him to follow the same strict meaningless routines everyday of his life. The narrator's statements about his life this early on in the film sum up the majority of what is being said throughout the length of the narrative. It’s the very core of the idea the audience is meant to take away after viewing this film. The title “Ikiru” directly translates to english as “To Live”. This title begs the question of what it means to live and when you ask that, you will inevitably be confronted with the question of what it means to die. “We only realize how beautiful life is when we chance upon death.” (Ikiru) In “Ikiru” themes of life and death are tied very closely together for it is not until after our protagonist learns of his imminent death that he starts to consider the meaning of his life. So it would be expected that in a movie about what it means to live our protagonist shouldn’t be living a dull meaningless life throughout the entirety of the plot. This is what gives the scene I chose to analyse such a crucial role that the whole film is centered on.
I decided to refer to the scene I chose for this analysis as the “Happy Birthday Scene”. It starts out with Toyo growing increasingly uncomfortable around Watanabe while sitting across from one another. He compares how he feels about his life to an experience he had we he almost drowned as a child and explains his relationship with his son. “...Don't talk to me about my son. I have no son. I'm all alone. My son is somewhere far, far away. Just as my parents were when I was drowning in that pond.” (Ikiru). That is the most he talks about his parents the whole movie but it seems that his relationship with them mirrors his relationship with his son. Earlier on in the film he remembers not being there for his son several time throughout his life. Perhaps he feels that the decision he makes later about building a playground for the neighborhood children will somehow make up for his emotional neglect towards his son. He admits that the reason he spends so much time with Toyo is because she is the only person who really feels like family to him. He starts describing his depression to Toyo “I felt exactly the same way then. Everything seems black. No matter how I struggle and panic, there's nothing to grab hold of, …” (Ikiru) Watanabe’s depression is contrasted by the happiness shared by a group of young women at a party seen through a window behind him. This juxtaposition of emotion can be compared to the end of an earlier sequence in the film after a party with a man he met in a bar.
After receiving his diagnosis Watanabe tries to find meaning through drinking in a bar as much as he can before his death. He admits to a stranger in a bar that all of this drinking with his stomach cancer is suicide. He explains to him both his fear of death and his weak will to live. Once he explains all the money he has made in his years of working he asks of the stranger to show him a good time and teach him how to spend all of the money he has on him in one night. The stranger is hesitant at first but instead offers to pay for their night out. He explains his hedonistic viewpoint and convinces Watanabe to experience as much immediate pleasure he can get from life. They go through drinking, gambling and dancing with beautiful women for a night. After his hat is stolen from him by a woman in a crowd he is convinced to buy a new one by his new found friend who says it will help create a new version of himself. This small act embodies his ideals of using material items to create new meaning in life. However this youthful overstimulation proves to be too tiresome. Watanabe soon realizes as the night dies down that this way of living would still not bring him any more meaning or joy. It would merely have him forget about life and push away the idea of death for another time. He sings a song “Gondola no Uta” which directly translates in english to “Life is Brief”. The final verse of the song as translated in English is as follows,“Life is brief / fall in love, maidens / before the raven tresses / begin to fade / before the flame in your hearts / flicker and die / for those to whom today / will never return” (Isamu Yoshii). The lyrics to this song parallel the struggle of clinging to life that Watanabe is going through at the time he sings it. In a sense he is singing it to tell the young people he is with to start the search for meaning in life before their youthfulness fades away. This way they can avoid being old and full of regret like the man he has become. Because of the juxtaposition of this scene and the “Happy Birthday Scene” he feels that no progress has been made in his search for a meaningful life.
Because he has come to face this depression surrounded by so much young energy yet again he feels as though he has been wasting even more time. Through his conversation with Toyo as he realizes how to bring meaning to his life in a moment of clarity. He asks Toyo what makes her so full of life in a moment of desperation. She says that she doesn’t know what can possibly be making her more happy in life than him. Upon further examination, she tells him that she spends her free time making toy bunnies for small children in Japan. She says that when she makes them she feels as though she is playing with every baby in Japan. Because of this she suggests that he make something as well but he responds saying that nothing can be made at his office. After he claims that it is too late to make a difference he has a long moment of reflection as he slowly accepts that he will die having lived a meaningless life. For the entirety of the film up to this point he had been searching for meaning through external sources but it’s only a change from within that gives him what he is looking for. It is after this moment that he realizes that it is not too late, that the meaning in life he had been searching for had be right in front of him the entire time. Once he finally changes his old perception of his job he can finally make a difference in his community by pushing towards the clearing of a cesspool in order to build a playground for the neighborhood children. Perhaps this is a realization of why he started this office job in the first place only to be bogged down by the tireless routine of the bureaucratic system. This is his rebirth out of his old way of thinking into a whole new perception of what he has been capable of his whole life. It is an epiphany on Watanabe’s acceptance of death but it is only after this moment in which he feels truly alive. He takes a hold of his life for the first time in this film and is actually motivated to get something done. It may be too late to cure his physical problems and fix his torn relationships with his family but it’s not too late to make a positive difference in his community. As he leaves the diner the group of young women at the party behind him appear to watch him go down the stairs as they sing Happy Birthday to a friend of theirs on the bottom floor. This is almost the extreme opposite of “Gondola No Uta” symbolizing the emergence of life and youthfulness and marks a new chapter in Watanabe’s life.
This moment of clarity is mirrored at the end of the film by the bureaucrats at his wake. They reflect on what Watanabe had done in the days before his death. In different flashback sequences from the perspective of separate men in the room during his wake they remember how motivated he was and just how much of his effort resulted in the playground being built. The men realize that Watanabe must have known about his impending death and that any of them would have acted the same way under those circumstances. However when one of the men say “But any one of us could suddenly drop dead” (Ikiru) they realize that they too have short and fragile lives. This is their moment of clarity similar to what Watanabe experienced when at the diner with Toyo. When they are all drunk that night they vow to live their lives according to the example set by Watanabe. Unfortunately this lesson learned does stick with them overnight as we see the same pattern of lazily pushing problems over to different departments instead of actually trying to make a difference. One worker takes a stand for what Watanabe fought for the next morning at work and wants to continue his legacy. However he is not as strong willed as Watanabe once was and backs down when his rebellion is followed by the defensive stares of his fellow bureaucrats in his office and the piercing scorn of the newly appointed department chief.. As he sits back down in his chair and lay his head on his desk he is completely blocked from view of the camera by a mountain of paperwork symbolizing his defeat. For the final scene of this film the same bureaucrat who tried stand up to the rest of them at the office looks onto the playground that was Watanabe’s final project. The song “Gondola no Uta” is playing in the background and after we see some children leave the swing set the camera holds on the movement of the swings as if Watanabe’s spirit is still present in some form looking over the children. This may hint that this bureaucrat may some day follow in a similar path as Watanabe.
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