Terminal Beauty

When the Tivoli shows Akira Kurosawa’s newly restored 1952 epic Ikiru in this month’s Film Forum, the marquee will not translate the film’s title. Some early translations dubbed the pathos-inducing movie Living; others labeled it Doomed. When you can’t decide between those two options, it’s best to embrace the ambiguous place in between.

That is essentially what Kurosawa did. Ikiru is about Watanabe, a stodgy bureaucrat with terrible posture. As the film opens, the silent shell of a man holds a record for perfect attendance at work, which he sacrifices to take a day off and see a doctor about crippling stomach pains.

He’s told he has an ulcer. But a mysterious waiting-room interloper has already let him in on the secret that if he learns he can eat whatever he likes and an operation won’t be necessary, he doesn’t have long to live.

This is where the film becomes unusual, both in structure and in story line. Watanabe starts meeting women, drinking, even singing — but not in a last-hurrah kind of way. He’s still the sad old man he was in the beginning, except that now he wants to kick a hole in the monotony of his life and see what’s behind it. The dent in his attendance record is only the first blow. Meanwhile, the linear storytelling suddenly gives way to frequent jumps back and forth in time.

In the end, Watanabe finds meaning in trying to build a playground on a piece of unused land. In contrast to an early scene in which he wades patiently through the haltingly inefficient bureaucratic process, the new Watanabe is in a hurry to see results.

People who have watched this movie on video will probably be among the most eager to see it on the big screen, in spite of an intimidating 143-minute running time. Now that the warbles and scratches and spots have been repaired, the experience should feel much closer than 1952 Japan.