14.5 part 2 - WRITE AKIRA KUROSAWA - IKIRU - CRITIQUE
This critique is worth 10% of your overall grade.
1. Remember your work must be two to three pages in length, typed at either single, or one and one half spaced (900 - 1350 words) on a topic of your choice as applied to Ikiru. In regards to form, a critique includes an introductory paragraph with a topic sentence, the body which discusses at least three pertinent points, and a conclusion.
2. The second part of this assignment is a peer review. Consider this a group project. Here you will automatically be assigned a student to review. Use the rubric as a guideline for your input. Like the discussion responses you will be expected to give feedback on the critique, what worked and what could be improved upon and, why? Is there a topic sentence, a conclusion, are sources properly cited, etc.? Remember, peer feedback is an excellent educational tool. The rubric should be beneficial.
3.Complete the peer review for the Ikiru critique by Dec 5th. Make sure you leave comments for your fellow students. After you have received feedback on your work you will have an opportunity to submit a revised critique by Dec 8th. Once the peer reviews are completed I will grade your work. Please inform me if you resubmitted your work so it is not considered late.
My Critique:
Ida Z.
Anna Geyer
Introduction to Film Studies 70427-931
29 November 2021
Critique Assignment
There are many moving films by auteur director/screenwriters that
I respect telling the story of an elder facing their mortality and doing so
with horrible children. One comparison is Ingmar Bergman’s Wild
Strawberries (1957) with the elder Professor Isak Borg and his distant
ambivalent son. The closer comparison is Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953)
where the elder husband and his terminal wife from the country visit
their callous city children in Tokyo. Akira Kurosawa is able to take this
simple storyline and with famously unique screenwriting style and
use of Brechtian technique; create the screenplay of Ikiru (1952)
into a film that was novel for his time and today.
Kurosawa developed the protagonist Mr. Watanabe. A man of
values, principles and ethics. A man that was not
sick from work for twenty-nine years and worked within the
bureaucratic civil service system without ruffling feathers.
“He’s presented with Brechtian objectivity via a quiet voice-over which tells
us he’s got on for twenty-nine years by doing nothing at all” (Cochran).
We are introduced in an emotionally
restricted way to the background story of Mr. Watanabe’s family life
and relationship with his son using a Hollywood montage way of storytelling. We
see him caring for Matsuo above his own needs from his
wife’s funeral to the present day. He is so
selfless that he has declined advice to remarry for his own
needs to take care of his son’s.
Mr. Watanabe saved all his money and provided for his
son and daughter-in-law. We see a solid man that has done everything that has
been expected of him as a Japanese salaryman and a father. At the same time of
building up this honorable character, Kurosawa is letting us know that this
honest, simple soul is going to die. It’s an interesting Kurosawa strategy of
building up a character for us to love and killing him at the same time. He is
doubling our emotional concern over the character, yet also distancing us.
Kurosawa uses Brechtian technique in Ikiru. “The formal experimentation of Ikiru has
one central purpose: to sharpen the film’s focus by controlling and limiting
the audience’s emotional response. A film about the last months of a man who
knows he is dying is inherently threatened by a descent into bathos…yet the
form of the film prevents this from happening and aids in its didactic task”
(Prince 101). Bathos
meaning over sentimentality.
So, what
is the Brechtian film purpose that requires a controlled and limited
response?
“Kurosawa too,
is committed in Ikiru, as in much of his other work, to the
“uniformed” characters, to those just starting out in life whose moral
transformation the films study and place in relation to a detailed social
context. Heroes like Watanabe – are intended as explicit role models
for the audience, but the values incarnated by their behavior are communicated
through a “complex seeing” in which these lessons in responsible living are
filtered through, altered, and sometimes deformed by the social order,
whose competing values generate other voices in the texts that contest the
example provided by the hero” (Prince 101).
The
screenwriting form of Ikiru is “a two-act structure:
The first act being Watanabe coming to terms with his illness, and
the second a posthumous re-counting at his wake of his building the
park/ruminations on the man himself” (tvtropes).
The narrative
in Ikiru is nonlinear. This is used intentionally by Kurosawa
as an unusual structure so that he can go to “good parts of a storyline that would’ve been too
complicated and difficult to tell in a linear fashion” (Man). I
believe he was writing the screenplay with a director’s mind editing the story
and jumping to choice pieces, not feeling obliged to fill in all the
blanks as traditional linear screenwriter would build a
story from A to Z. Yet, somehow, Kurosawa seems to
cover everything we need to know.
The nonlinear narrative
structure and “its form is marked by jumps,
curves, and montages.” It goes back to what Brecht spoke of in using
film experimentation “to sharpen the film’s focus by controlling and
limiting” the emotional response of the audience. A nonlinear structure
also makes an emphasis on “human life as a process open to change” (Prince
101).
“Kurosawa is known for is a diptych form of
narrative” (Eggert). Diptych meaning a literary work
consisting of two contrasting parts (as a narrative telling the same story from
two opposing points of view) (Yourdictionary).
“With Ikiru,
Kurosawa studies a life as it changes from wholly empty to filled with
intention, and then he considers how that life was viewed by others.
The posthumous portion reveals itself to be tragically ironic, as the
attendees at Watanabe’s wake talk of his life and grossly reduce it through
their skewed perception of his final days. In each case with his diptych films,
Kurosawa considers the relationship between the real and the ideal” (Eggert).
Kurosawa uses
this type of narrative in other films. Criterion in a review described the
film structure as unconventional, even
radical in design. Probably
most famously used in Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950).
In the
film Rashomon, there is
a similar scene as the retelling Mr. Watanabe’s life
at his funeral memorial. The Rashomon effect “gives us four versions of the same series of events….
each retelling markedly different from the others” through the eyes of various
witness at a trial (Prince/Criterion).
Criterion says
Kurosawa introduced the use of this new type of film storytelling. “When Rashomon (1950) played in Venice and
then went into international distribution, it stunned audiences. No one had
ever seen a film quite like this one. For one thing, its daring, nonlinear
approach to narrative shows the details of the crime as they are related,
through the flashbacks of those involved” (Prince/Criterion).
“Kurosawa’s visionary approach
would have enormous cinematic and cultural influence. He bequeathed to world
cinema and television a striking narrative device—countless movies
and television shows have remade Rashomon by incorporating the
contradictory flashbacks of unreliable narrators” (Prince/Criterion).
The uniqueness of
Kurosawa’s screenwriting with
a two-act diptych and nonlinear structure
and the use of Brechtian technique is what makes Ikiru such
an interesting and unique work. Also as stated he uses the hero Watanabe’s
moral transformation in its social context as an intended role model
for the audience. This social statement takes it to another level of influence
as well. Filmmakers are influenced by Kurosawa as Criterion credits him with
the first us of diptych style in film. These create a novel film
in Ikiru that It is still admired as one of Akira Kurosawa’s great films
and studied today.
Works
Cited
Cochran,
Peter. “Umberto D. (Vittorio de Sica) and Ikiru (Akira
Kurosawa) both 1952.”
Petercochran.wordpress.com.
Feb. 2009
https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/umbert_d_and_ikiru.pdf
Eggert, Brian. “The Definitives: Ikiru.” Deep
Focus Review, 5 Jan. 2009.
https://deepfocusreview.com/definitives/ikiru/
Man, Mystery. “THE CRAFT: To Hell With Story
Structure.” Script Magazine. 18 Jul. 2017.
https://scriptmag.com/features/the-craft-to-hell-with-story-structure
Prince, Stephen. “The Rashomon Effect.” Criterion. 6 Nov. 2012.
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/195-the-rashomon-effect
Prince, Stephen. The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema
of Akira Kurosawa. Revised and Expanded
Edition.,
Princeton University Press, 2020.
https://books.google.com/books?id=qG3dDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=kurosawa+film+ikiru+nonlinear&source=bl&ots=Jn_vzCpkLD&sig=ACfU3U27LnV0nmKTyHSRwbqbbhYfjlF6Ow&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwisop2M4av0AhXDtp4KHX1XCP4Q6AF6BAgmEAM#v=onepage&q=kurosawa%20film%20ikiru%20nonlinear&f=false
Tvtropes. “Film / Ikiru.” tvtropes.org.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Ikiru
Yourdictionary. “Diptych meaning.” yourdictionary.com.
https://www.yourdictionary.com/diptych
Wow Ida, what a myriad of academic backup in
your critique and puzzle to figure out for me. Much of it I can't understand,
but I will try and comment. In the second paragraph you state that Watanabe
worked for 29 years without ruffling feathers. I assume this to mean
bureaucratic feathers, as we saw the disgruntled ladies or 'the public'
reaction to his 'doing nothing.' Those were some ruffled feathers.
I loved how you brought in comparisons to Bergman and Ozu in your into. I also admire your observation that the children were callous. This leads me to think that parents like this reap what they sow, so to speak, literally.
I would also agree that Brechtian objectivity
is appropriate. When I think of Brecht, I think of emotionless, so emotionless
freedom from bias. I also agree that the depictions from his past are
restricted emotionally. The scene where he watched his son get struck out in
baseball was filled with squelched emotion.
Brecht hadn't come to mind for me, so I find
this idea fascinating. I just figured that he reacted in a Japanese way. Proper
and to himself. When you mention that Kurosawa was building up a character to
love and then kill him, I didn't feel much love for him. I just thought he did
what was necessary and in keeping with his expected duty as a father.
I don't know what is meant about 'yet
distancing us', but it feels in keeping with your Brechtian idea.
I felt distanced from Watanabe until he marched
into the office after his absence, in his rakish white hat. Then the love came
for this man with a new mission. I didn't know the word bathos, so I looked it
up and it says 'the sudden appearance of the commonplace in otherwise elevated
matter of style.'
The paragraph about the Brechtian film purpose
is one I had to read several times but I get it now (kind of). I won't stay
stuck on that or my head will explode.
Moving on.... I don't think I agree
with tvtropes assessment of the film being a two-act structure,
although I can see why an analysis would point this way.
The reactions and opinions of Watanabe's
associates, friends and family at the funeral were, to me, like the telephone
game. As we all have our version of reality and bend our words and thinking to
match how we 'really' feel about something, the real truth becomes our version
of the truth; especially when reflecting on others, so this to me is what
happens in the world, period. People do one thing and are remembered in another
way, by those who think they know what the real score is.
The ego-driven boss that wanted to take
responsibility for Watanabe's success with the park just spoke to how people
envision themselves and make it about himself. Over time, the truth of his
success comes to light and one by one, they all come to realize that he maybe
wasn't a great man, but he did a great thing (although a few thought he was
great) I did not.
I do agree with the diptych idea, that would
lend to the two-part structure, but I'm still holding that the film had three
distinctive parts, and the most important one was the journey he went through
to get to where he got.
Or maybe i just like any film that
includes brothels.
You mention Rashomon, and this device in
storytelling is a bit similar for the funeral scene, but in Rashomon it was
done amplified and the only style.
I love the idea in your conclusion that the moral transformation has a social context as well as a personal message to the audience as that is the effect the film had on me. Well done! Your in-depth study made me think HARD...and look up words! Dang girl!
My post to teacher - Anna:
Hi Anna,
Just FYI, I do respect Robert’s feedback on my critique but think I will stand behind the sources I cited and will not re-do things to be a considerably different paper.
So, It's my final paper now.
Thanks,
Ida
2nd note to Anna:
Ok, I decided to make some changes on my paper. Will send the final post soon.
ida
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