I find Ikiru exciting for the same reasons I found Fellini's 8 1/2 frustrating--the outward resolution runs parallel to the inner struggle of the individual, not against it. We only get the solution to Watanabe-san's basic problems once he has come to greater self-awareness, not as a bone from a filmmaker too lazy to come up with anything else. It's also one of the most compelling protests against big-government bureacracy ever waged by a filmmaker, not merely in how it makes fun of the worthlessness of such entities (there is a virtuoso sequence showing a group of poor women literally getting the "run-around" by the local bureaucrats that makes the local DMV seem like an express lane at Piggly-Wiggly), but in how it positions the bureacracy as detrimental to our ability to do good for anyone (a stance, by the way, which the Catholic Church has held for years in the principle of subsidarity, so often ignored by those Catholics claiming to represent the Church's teaching on "social justice"). Kurosawa's message would have been doubly effective in a Japanese context where the anti-conformist streak of the "new" Watanabe-san would have been vigorously fought against (and is fought against in the film), but given the unprecedented growth in government size being pushed by both political parties today, this conservative was happy to be reminded why we fought against such policies in the first place. These elements combine to make Ikiru one of those precious few films that manage to both pull at our heartstrings effectively and pull them in a philosophically meaninful way.
***

Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, USA, 2005, R)

Broken Flowers is a beautifully filmed existential haiku, a movie that poses as a search for deeper meaning but in fact has nothing interesting to share with us in the end. The trip is fun, but in the end, it really gets us nowhere, leaving us completely unmoved for any of its protagonists.

The film analyzes a not-so-usual time in the life of Don Johnston (Bill Murray), an aging Don Juan who "made some money in computers" and now spends his time sitting on his couch and entertaining his neighbor, Winston, an immigrant with a wife and five children who's fascinated by detectives. Don receives an anonymous letter on pink stationery, supposedly from an old flame, claiming she's the mother of a son he fathered nearly twenty years ago. Initially, Don is unmoved, but with a little nudging from expert snoop Winston ("Is your daddy really named Sam Spade?") Don is launched on an expedition to find the mother of his son.

Article Author: Michael Gerardi

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