A few weeks back I reviewed a movie called Rashomon, which I considered to be an absolute masterpiece. That movie was directed by Akira Kurosawa, and so I was really excited when I saw that Ikiru was by the same director. I’ve also always heard way more about Ikiru than Rashomon, so I figured that I was going to be blown away by Ikiru. Unfortunately, while I did like this movie, it wasn’t quite the same level of masterpiece that I found Rashomon to be.

To be fair, I think that Ikiru has a fantastic premise. The movie starts with an old bureaucrat named Kanji Watanabe finding out that he has terminal stomach cancer. Watanabe realizes that he’s wasted the last 30 years of his life at his job, and so he decides to spend his final days trying to find meaning. I’m always really interested in concepts like this, and so I was really into the movie from the start.

Where the movie went wrong for me personally was its length. The movie clocks in at a little under 2 and a half hours, and this movie was a perfect example for me of how a movie should only be this long if it has enough interesting things going on. The frustrating thing about Ikiru for me was that it has some really incredible scenes in it, but these are mixed with plenty of moments that just feel like dead air. This makes the movie drag after a while, and this is most notable in the second half of the movie, when it mainly starts being about a bunch of guys sitting around talking (no spoilers to the context).

However, when it’s on point, Ikiru is really good. There were some quotes throughout the movie that I found to be really profound. The movie does a great job at tackling themes of life’s meaning, family problems, and bureaucratic nonsense. There are some moments throughout the movie where Watanabe is reflecting or trying to make sense of things, and I was so invested in his journey. If this movie received some edits to trim out some of the dead air and shorten the length, I think it would be a fantastic movie. But as it is, I only liked it, when I was hoping to love it.

3.5/5