Patton Oswalt discusses the brilliance of Akira Kurosawa film ‘Ikiru’
To say that Akira Kurosawa is a master filmmaker would be something of an understatement. Amongst his oeuvre are some of the best and most impactfully influential films ever made, including Seven Samurai, Rashomon and Ran.
The actor Patton Oswalt once weighed in on Kurosawa and gave special reverence to his 1952 classic Ikiru. The film tells the story of a Japanese bureaucrat who is informed that he has terminal cancer and lives out the last of his days in search of the meaning of life.
Oswalt argued that Ikiru often goes under the radar of the general public, as it is overshadowed by Kurosawa’s ‘bigger’ films. He said: “What’s weird is a lot of people who aren’t cinephiles will talk about Rashomon and Seven Samurai and Yojimbo because those are the ones that the general public knows. Or they’ll talk about Kagemusha because, ‘Oh, Lucas and Spielberg produced that one’.”
In fact, Oswalt believes that Ikiru is so powerful that it can make audience members of the film rethink their lives. He explained: “I remember – I won’t name the show – but there was a producer on a show that told me, ‘I’ve always wanted to take the writing staff on a Friday afternoon and show the film Ikiru, and then see who comes back in on Monday.’ Also, Kore-eda’s Afterlife, where you watch it, and you genuinely rethink your life.”
Amongst Ikiru, Oswalt gives praise to a Bill Murray classic as another film that makes one rethink their own moral values. Oswalt continued: “Groundhog Day, Kore-eda’s Afterlife and Kurosawa’s Ikiru are ‘I need to rethink my life right now’. It’s [Ikiru] such a simple story. A guy finds out he’s getting cancer, it’s inoperable, and he’s just going through the seven stages of, ‘Well, I’m just gonna party.’ And by the way, he’s this minor government official that no one talks to. He has this crappy little job. He literally works in Parks and Rec; that’s literally his job”.
Adding: “Everyone calls him ‘the mummy’ because his desk is just stacks of paper. ‘Oh, look, the mummy’s behind there’ because no one listens to him. He goes, ‘I’m going to build this little playground in the centre of the city. This tiny little playground. And they show him going through it, and in the final scene, the final image of that movie will devastate you in a good way.”
It’s a common thought of people in great admiration of a particular film that they wish they could watch it again for the first time without knowing its plot and themes. Oswalt certainly feels like this about Ikiru, and he wishes he could apply the technology from a certain Charlie Kaufmann favourite.
On Ikiru, Oswalt concluded: “That’s one of those movies that when people tell me they’ve never seen it… You know that movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where you can erase memories? I would love to erase the memory of having watched The Wire so I could watch it – I’ve seen it five times in a row now, but it’s the same with Ikiru. I would erase that memory just to experience it again.”
