Slump Cinema screens: Ikiru (1952)
Settling into winter calls for reflection, slower movement and introspection and Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Set in post war Tokyo, the film follows Mr Watanabe, a civil servant who has spent decades trapped in the monotony of his bureaucratic job at the city council. After discovering he has terminal cancer, and is faced with his own mortality, Watanabe begins searching for meaning in the time he has left, questioning the life he has lived and what it really means to be alive.
Tender, quietly devastating and bittersweet, Kurosawa invites us to consider what it means to live meaningfully, and whether it’s too late to begin.
