Ikiru (NR) 7.5

Ikiru (1952) : Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing. He learns he is dying of cancer and wants to find some meaning in his life. He finds himself unable to talk with his family, and spends a night on the town with a novelist, but that leaves him unfulfilled. (8.4)

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Writers: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto
Stars: Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Shin'ichi Himori

Another thinking man's movie from the famed directory Kurosawa. Like Rashomon, a simple question turns a man's life upside down and challenges his entire belief system. The story is intriguing, but it is the way of portrayal on the screen that grabs the attention. (It also takes some getting used to the Japanese social mannerisms, but bureaucracy is the same everywhere.) More than the dialog, the pictures and composition tell the story. My Rating: 7.5