Ikiru

I haven't written such long posts before, at least not as often as I seem to be doing now. It's a habit that's carried over from the days of handwriting, I think, when I could write wherever I wanted, as long as there was time and graphite to spare. There is something satisfying in the way that the written word accumulates on paper, and the way the journals coalesce into something substantial, as if distilling thoughts and condensing ideas out of the fog of consciousness. It's far more satisfying, I think, than seeing your history build up on a blogging site. And I realise that not many people nowadays have the luxury of reading through such long rants everyday. Well, I hope to entertain, but above all I want to write!

Watched Akira Kuroshawa's Ikiru yesterday, and it was amazing. Started out rather awkwardly, rather forward compared to the Fellini and the Bergman that I watched earlier. But the film was like a Murakami story, somewhat dreamy, frank and direct but with a haze around the edges, a wistful yearning underpinning everything. And the Japanese artists do caricature and imagery so well - there were moments that were positively poetic, in how the composition of the monochrome tones came together with the soundtrack and the words.

There was the scene in his bedroom, after Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and only six months left to live. He goes blindly through the little rituals of getting ready to go to bed, as if in a daze, muscle memory animating a stunned body. He winds his watch out of blind habit, then winds his alarm clock as if in preparation to wake up at the start of another unchanged day. Then he catches sight of his Civil Service certificates acknowledging his twenty-five years of dedicated, distinguished obscurity. And, overcome by despair, or fear, he dives for the covers.

Then there is the scene in the bar, where he drowns his bitterness with the more distracting bitterness to be found at the bottom of a bottle of sake. Watanabe confides his fears and frustrations in a passing writer, the alcohol and the sleeping pills he gives to the writer (was he planning a quiet suicide?) seeming to unhinge his habitual reservation. Then a scene at another bar, where he plays one of those old machines where a ball drops down a slalom course of cartwheels and posts. The colours whirl, the writer leans in: "this vending machine of dreams and infatuations".

There was another very striking scene, when Watanabe and a young female colleague are sitting in a high-class restaurant. In the foreground, she demands to know why he is practically stalking her on a daily basis. He in turn tries to explain why he finds her so captivating, but ultimately is incapable of finding the right words to express his hunger for her vitality and vivaciousness. In the background, a large gathering of teenage students prepare to celebrate a friend's birthday, their shouts and cries piercing the couple's sombre conversation. And when Watamabe comes to his epiphanic moment, and sees clearly what he must do, and is seized by a sudden burst of compelling necessity, he runs down the stairs past the girl who is climbing up to a chorus of "Happy Birthday". The parallel, the contrast, is obvious.

There are some other memorable motifs - Watanabe is attached to many antique images, such as the official stamp that he wields like a totem. And his younger colleague nicknames him the "mummy". His face is also a powerful image, the face worn with wrinkles, and yet the eyes burning and bulging with such determination, fascination and fear. The characters almost get run over by traffic several times - almost, as if they were just about to be bulldozed by life's inexorable progress, indifferent to their own dramas and revelations. There are only two English songs in the film, the "Happy Birthday" and a little ditty that two au pairs shriek out hideously on Watamabe's first night out on the town. And the theme song, his mournful rendition of "Life is brief/ Fall in love, maidens...", appears twice, once in a drunken moment of piercing lucidity at the start of his stand against obscurity, and the second time posthumously, just before his death as he takes stock of his achievements.

Watanabe is, throughout the film, plagued by an inability to communicate his fundamental realisations about the nature and meaning of life. "What I mean to say," he stmbles, and other times, bleats repeatedly, "in other words...". He cannot even find the opportunity or the means to tell his own son about his fatal cancer, and when he dies, it is a mystery to everyone. In desperation, he almost manages to break through his linguistic block in the restaurant scene, but his audience was not in the right state of mind to receive his message. And in the end, he resolves to craft a legacy for himself with the work of his last days; actions speak louder than words, and only actions can produce a message loud enough to survive the white noise of time passing.

But drinks are a means to release hindered powers of expression. Watanabe and the writer speak most truthfully when drunk, and he sings his song most evocatively when drunk. At his wake, drinks release the inhibitions of his civil-service colleagues, and opens the door to the truth about his motivations in his last days, stripping away the layers of politics and bureaucracy. In inebriation, they approach a truth about meaning that they cannot act upon when sober. Drinks release lucidity, but absolves people from remembering.

It was sometimes over the top, sometimes uncomfortably incisive, sometimes comical in its absurd tragedy, but always the film is frank and clever, and beautiful in its crafting. It's not a difficult film to watch, but it is very rich in style and in meaning. My first Kuroshawa, and I recommend it to everyone, and I eagerly look forward to more.

*

And here's a line from 8 ½ that stuck with me when I was shuttling through the film commentary. It takes place near the end of the film, and I think this is the single most pivotal point in the development of Guido's character. It is when he first expresses his core problem, and shows just how aware he is of his own dilemma.

GUIDO

Could you leave everything behind and start from zero again? Pick one thing, and one only, and be absolutely devoted to it? Make it the reason for your existence, the thing that contains everything, that becomes everything, because your dedication to it makes it last forever? Could you?

...No, this guy here, he couldn't. He wants to grab everything, can't give up a single thing. He changes his mind every day, beacuse he's afraid he might miss the right path. And he's slowly bleeding to death.

CLAUDIA

So this is how the movie ends?

GUIDO

No, this is how it starts.