How should we be ‘Living’? Kurosawa and Ishiguro tackle the question, 70 years apart

How should we be ‘Living’? Kurosawa and Ishiguro tackle the question, 70 years apart

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161482211/kazuo-ishiguro-living-ikiru-oscars

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  1. Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Bilal Qureshi:

    >Shot in Japan in the early 1950s, [*Ikiru* is] an existential and philosophical film about an aging Tokyo bureaucrat who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis.

    >The illness sets off an internal journey as the film’s central character examines the choices he’s made and decides to live more fully. What was for Kurosawa in part a critique of postwar Japanese bureaucracy and workaholism became for Kazuo Ishiguro a formative guide to living.

    >”One of the things about the original Japanese film that really appealed to me,” he explains, “it emphasizes the fact that you can’t rely on the applause of the wider world to tell you whether you’ve lived well or not.

    >”Public acclaim may be nice to have, but ultimately, it’s not worth very much. It’s treacherous, fickle, it’s usually wrong… you’ve got to take a lonely private view of what is success and failure for you. I think that is what it’s saying.”

    > 

    >Now seventy years after *Ikiru* was released, Ishiguro has earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for his new film *Living*.

    >Instead of a remake, *Living* transplants the story of *Ikiru* from postwar Tokyo to 1950s London where the writer himself arrived as a young boy – a city of top hats, public bureaucrats, and chilling emotional reserve, recreated as a lush cinematic universe by director Oliver Hermanus.

    >The British writer and critic Pico Iyer, who lives in Japan, and wrote the Criterion companion essay^2 to *Ikiru*, says *Living* is a remarkable example of how Ishiguro’s art bridges his many cultural identities to create work that is deeply universal.

    >What may seem on the surface to be a simple costume drama, is infused with the spirit and the message of Kurosawa’s original film, and a poignant Japanese concern with the temporary nature of things.

    ^1 Bilal Qureshi for All Things Considered/NPR, 7 Mar. 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161482211/kazuo-ishiguro-living-ikiru-oscars

    ^2 *Ikiru* Many Autumns Later, Pico Iyer, 25 Nov. 2015, https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3810-ikiru-many-autumns-later

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