David O'ConnellI Live in Fear
September 4th 2009 05:30
Akira Kurosawa was asking a lot of his regular collaborator Toshiro Mifune in playing a spiritually desolate man well beyond his years in this sobering 1955 drama. There were substancial creative risks attached; with dyed hair, unflattering glasses, and aging make-up, Mifune would portray Kiichi Nakajima, the figurehead of a wealthy family whose paranoia begins to drive a wedge between him and his offspring. All credibility seemed at stake if his interpretation lacked the necessary conviction.
Matters have deteriorated to the point where Nakajima’s children have orchestrated a legal maneuver, coercing their mother into being the movement’s legal representative. They want a ruling to intervene on their behalf, preventing their father from selling his foundry to relocate them all to Brazil, the one location on Earth he imagines, for some reason, is safe from the threat of atom bombs and a nuclear fallout. Naturally they resist, seeing the upheaval as unnecessary and disruptive to their individual lives.
Having already frittered away part of his wealth on building useless shelters, the family can no longer stand the thought of his delusional paranoia wiping away their own future financial stability. The proceedings turn bitter, often violent too, as the old man is confronted by the perceived disloyalty of his brood, weighing down further a heart heavy with inner turmoil.
Are the children motivated by greed, wanting to pester the old man to an early grave so they can divide up his fortune? Or are they genuinely concerned for his physical and psychological well-being?
On the flip side, Dr. Harada (Takashi Shimura), one of the court arbitrators ruling on the case, is racked by the guilt he feels for caving in to the final decision of his fellow adjudicators. An empathetic humanist, he feels personally aggrieved by Nakajima’s distress and has the old man’s stake weighing on his own conscience after a chance meeting in public.
Tapping into the palpable dread of a vanquished Japan in the post-war years, Kurosawa unleashes another intense and memorable creation via his staunchest muse, Mifune. Teetering on the brink of both paranoia and insanity, Nakajima is swallowed by fears bloated to irrational extremes. The carefree acceptance of those around him seems tied into some conspiracy in his mind, one set to tip him over into madness before he can arrange a Brazilian safe haven.
It’s a juggling act for the great Mifune, known to squander the virtues of light and shade by tossing subtlety to the wind. Here his transformation is ultimately a successful one and he inverts his physicality into a frail reminder of how insecurities can cause injury, even beyond the shield of wealth and familial assurances, artificial though they may be.
An interesting correlation with Kurosawa's film is that of Yasujiro Ozu’s masterful Tokyo Story, made just two years earlier. In both films, the aged are dismissed for their lack of validity in the world, seen through young eyes with a kind of contemptuous backward glance. Also in both, the parents of the elderly protagonists are seen engaging in distasteful haggling over the fortune they see as theirs by right.
Though regarded as a relatively minor work in Kurosawa’s extraordinary canon, I Live in Fear (Record of a Living Being) - brought to magnificent, seething life by the country's greatest actor - is well worth seeking out. It's still startling too for its vivid reflections of Japanese apprehensions of the time, and features an ending so bleakly mournful it's impossible to forget.
Matters have deteriorated to the point where Nakajima’s children have orchestrated a legal maneuver, coercing their mother into being the movement’s legal representative. They want a ruling to intervene on their behalf, preventing their father from selling his foundry to relocate them all to Brazil, the one location on Earth he imagines, for some reason, is safe from the threat of atom bombs and a nuclear fallout. Naturally they resist, seeing the upheaval as unnecessary and disruptive to their individual lives.
Having already frittered away part of his wealth on building useless shelters, the family can no longer stand the thought of his delusional paranoia wiping away their own future financial stability. The proceedings turn bitter, often violent too, as the old man is confronted by the perceived disloyalty of his brood, weighing down further a heart heavy with inner turmoil.
Are the children motivated by greed, wanting to pester the old man to an early grave so they can divide up his fortune? Or are they genuinely concerned for his physical and psychological well-being?
Getting down and dirty in court
On the flip side, Dr. Harada (Takashi Shimura), one of the court arbitrators ruling on the case, is racked by the guilt he feels for caving in to the final decision of his fellow adjudicators. An empathetic humanist, he feels personally aggrieved by Nakajima’s distress and has the old man’s stake weighing on his own conscience after a chance meeting in public.
Tapping into the palpable dread of a vanquished Japan in the post-war years, Kurosawa unleashes another intense and memorable creation via his staunchest muse, Mifune. Teetering on the brink of both paranoia and insanity, Nakajima is swallowed by fears bloated to irrational extremes. The carefree acceptance of those around him seems tied into some conspiracy in his mind, one set to tip him over into madness before he can arrange a Brazilian safe haven.
It’s a juggling act for the great Mifune, known to squander the virtues of light and shade by tossing subtlety to the wind. Here his transformation is ultimately a successful one and he inverts his physicality into a frail reminder of how insecurities can cause injury, even beyond the shield of wealth and familial assurances, artificial though they may be.
An interesting correlation with Kurosawa's film is that of Yasujiro Ozu’s masterful Tokyo Story, made just two years earlier. In both films, the aged are dismissed for their lack of validity in the world, seen through young eyes with a kind of contemptuous backward glance. Also in both, the parents of the elderly protagonists are seen engaging in distasteful haggling over the fortune they see as theirs by right.
Though regarded as a relatively minor work in Kurosawa’s extraordinary canon, I Live in Fear (Record of a Living Being) - brought to magnificent, seething life by the country's greatest actor - is well worth seeking out. It's still startling too for its vivid reflections of Japanese apprehensions of the time, and features an ending so bleakly mournful it's impossible to forget.
An almost unrecognisable Mifune as the disturbed Nakajima
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Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
It's pretty damn good but against the backdrop of so many masterpieces it's very easy for something like this to just slip under the radar.