Blu-ray, DVD Release: Ikiru

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Nov. 24, 2015
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


One of the greatest achievements by Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood), 1952’s  Ikiru presents the director at his most compassionate—affirming life through an exploration of death.

Takashi Shimura in Ikiru

Takashi Shimura in Ikiru

Takashi Shimura (Godzilla) beautifully portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer who is impelled to find meaning in his final days. Presented in a radically conceived two-part structure and shot with a perceptive, humanistic clarity of vision, Ikiru is a multifaceted look at what it means to be alive.

Presented in Japanese with English subtitles, Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD editions contain the following features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2004 by Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa
• A Message from Akira Kurosawa (2000), a ninety-minute documentary produced by Kurosawa Productions and featuring interviews with Kurosawa
• Documentary on Ikiru from 2003, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create, and featuring interviews with Kurosawa, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami, writer Hideo Oguni, actor Takashi Shimura, and others
• Trailer
• Essays by critic and travel writer Pico

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.