Ikiru Essential Art House

In what could be called Akira Kurosawa's It s a Wonderful Life, Takashi Shimura portrays Kanji Watanabe, an isolated, inward city office clerk who discovers he has stomach cancer and little time left on Earth. With a compelling, radical narrative structure, Kurosawa depicts Watanabe's last months and then how his final decisions have affected those left behind. Ikiru is one of the Japanese master's darkest, yet most life-affirming works.