Kanji 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.
Trailer
Reviews
Peter McGinn
7
By Peter McGinn
I watched the English follow-up version (Living) before watching this original, and wished I had reversed my order. I liked Living much more than this original, but since both were written by the same Japanese scriptwriter, my preference might be cultural rather than due to quality issues, not to mention the scriptwriter had come up with improvements through the intervening years.
The club and bar scenes near the beginning seem to go on much longer than in the remake, or at least it felt like it! And the same for the later scenes with the young woman. Then again, that wouldn’t be surprising since this older version is 40 minutes longer.
Still, the differences in the details based on the separate cultures are interesting to note, and I recommend both versions, though I would start with the older one as I mentioned above.
badelf
7
By badelf
Typical Kurasawa creative framing in the beginning of the movie. The scene of dancers shot through bead curtains swinging in time to the music was brilliant. His choice of Miki Odagiri for muse is brilliant. Her laugh is infectious. The last act stuck me as rather static. It's perhaps from cultural mores about the dead I don't understand (like the taboo of not ever sticking your chopsticks into the rice bowl!). Kurasawa waxes philosophical on life and government here, and indeed, nothing has changed in 70 years.
