Remade in 2022 as the English-language Living, this Japanese drama from co-writer and director Akira Kurosawa combines a heartfelt personal story with a more critical look at work and relationships.

| Mar 4, 2025

Ikiru is such a stunning work of poignancy because it values and champions the importance of life and one’s self. That resonance has only grown in the decades since its release.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 19, 2024

Kurosawa directs his story without resorting to sentiment or rousing scenes of inspirational drama and Shimura delivers a quiet, introspective performance. It’s a beautiful, touching film...

| Jul 1, 2023

Ikiru is a rare, potent film that earns every moment. Even with its carpe diem messaging, it does away with schmaltz and looks very seriously at the contradictions of earning a living, versus making a life.

| Jun 27, 2023

Sadness, inside a story of how a single man changes the course of his remaining days, has rarely been expressed with such grace and beauty.

| Aug 1, 2022

“Ikiru” is a true masterpiece of world cinema and a great testament to the prowess of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jul 24, 2022

A moving and extraordinary document of our time and its urban civilization.

| Jul 6, 2022

Kurosawa’s masterpiece endures, still finding new ways to scare me and speak to me after all this time. —Guest post by Kenji Fujishima

| Jun 10, 2022

Personally and in the end all film reviews are personal ones Ikiru simply failed to fully impress me. Kurosawa had done better, and would go on to do much better, in the future.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 26, 2022

A heartbreaking masterpiece that will inspire self-reflection, even a severe alteration of lifestyle in every viewer, the beautiful Ikiru is among the greatest, most life-affirming motion pictures ever made.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 21, 2022

[Kurosawa] is implemented with satirical brilliance and fine human interest... Lassitude in bureaucracy and skullduggery in politics are here to stay, he concedes, and only does the soul of man transcend his frailties.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2021

Celebrated director Akira Kurosawa fashioned not only a penetrating study of a man's last days, but a brilliant commentary on middle class life and beauracracy that is universally understood.

| Jun 7, 2021

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.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 7, 2021

Moving without being sentimental, Kurosawa reaches the sort of emotional depths akin to early Frank Capra films, where cynicism was pushed aside by the integrity of the human spirit.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 20, 2020

Kurosawa makes his worst mistake In treating what Is essentially lightweight, hock stuff in a ponderous and reverent manner.

| Sep 1, 2020

Such is the delicacy of Kurosawa's direction, and the discreet power of Takashi Shimura's central performance, that you will be moved to tears.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 12, 2020

It illuminates a reeling society while telling a story of deep human emotion.

| Jun 12, 2020

The narrative is carefully paced, the central performance magnificent, the final effect overwhelming in a manner that recalls the great Russian writers Kurosawa admired.

| Jun 12, 2020

An introspective, naturalistic contemporary drama combining progressive social criticism with a universal humanist message.

| Jun 12, 2020

As in others of Kurosawa's films, photographic accomplishment is unforgettable.

| Jul 16, 2019