35mm Screening!
Thursday, February 16th
at 7:00 PM
Akira Kurosawa’s
IKIRU
Members $10 | Public
$15
Hosted by Fred Craden
In conjunction with the opening of the new remake, Living (opening
at the CAC on January 27), we are pleased to present a big screen 35mm showing
of the legendary Akira Kurosawa original. Considered by some
to be Kurosawa’s greatest achievement, Ikiru presents
the director at his most compassionate — affirming life through an exploration
of a man’s death. Takashi Shimura portrays Kanji Watanabe, an
aging bureaucrat whose diagnosis with a fatal illness forces him to strip the
veneer off his existence and find meaning in his final days. Told in two
parts, Ikiru offers Watanabe’s quest in the present,
and then through a series of flashbacks. The result is a multifaceted look at a
life through a prism of perspectives, resulting in a full portrait of a man who
lacked understanding from others while alive. (Japan, 1952, 143 min., b/w,
Japanese with English Subtitles, 35mm | Dir. Akira Kurosawa)
“Over the years I have seen Ikiru every five years or
so, and each time it has moved me, and made me think. And the older I get, the
less Watanabe seems like a pathetic old man, and the more he seems like every
one of us.” –– Roger Ebert
“Meticulously constructed, beautifully played and
poignant.” –– David Parkinson, Empire
“Kurosawa achieves the piercing emotions and poetry of
the Italian neorealists by opposite means: he doesn’t make the camera
disappear. Instead, from the first view of the hero’s X-rays, he deploys his
camera so sharply and unerringly that it seems to take X-rays of the spirit. In
Takashi Shimura, Kurosawa found an actor who could stand up to this close
inspection.” –– Richard Brody, New Yorker
