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Ikiru is a masterpiece
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17 July 2008
Many good judges regard this long, quiet 1950 Kurosawa film as one of the greatest of all time. Yet it is far less familiar to most people than epics such as rashomon or Seven Samurai.
Its central character is a government bureaucrat who learns that he has six months to live, goes on a binge, flirts with a young girl, then finds a purpose for the remainder of his days building a children's playground on a stretch of wasteland. He is brilliantly played by Takashi Shimura (the leader of the Seven Samurai), and one of the cinema's most enduring sequences has him, near death, sitting on a swing in the newly finished playground with a winter's snow falling on the scene. A masterpiece by any standards.
Ikiru (Living)
Cert: PG
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