Ikiru – 4K restoration

kiru (1952) - 4K Remaster

One of the greatest achievements by Akira Kurosawa, IKIRU shows the director at his most compassionate—affirming life through an exploration of death.

Takashi Shimura beautifully portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer who is impelled to find meaning in his final days. Presented in a radically conceived two-part structure and shot with a perceptive, humanistic clarity of vision, IKIRU is a multifaceted look at what it means to be alive.

Remade in 2022 as Living, featuring an Oscar nominated performance by Bill Nighy, IKIRU is considered by many to be amongst Kurosawa’s best films. The film is a powerful indictment of official bureaucracy and our understanding of the joy of being alive.

"A thoughtful, existential meditation about the meaning of life and what constitutes a life well-lived, Ikiru is almost guaranteed to prod the viewer to examine his or her own mortality and ponder how, in the end, the scales will tip..." Reel Views

"It avoids all the maudlin cliches and blind alleys of examining the “meaning of life,” giving us instead a rare portrait of a man experiencing a genuine insight into what his wasted years have been leading to...." Chicago Reader

"Kurosawa achieves the piercing emotion and poetry of the Italian neorealists, but by opposite means: he doesn't make the camera disappear; instead... he deploys his camera so sharply and unerringly that it seems to take X-rays of the spirit...." Richard Brody (New Yorker)