I accept the fate of death, but I do not accept murder.

"Records of the Living Man" is one of Kurosawa Akira's works that has received little attention. The old man played by Toshiro Mifune is the owner of a coal mine. After he heard that the United States and the Soviet Union were conducting a hydrogen bomb test, the radiation would spread to Japan. In order to avoid radiation pollution, he decided to flee with his family to Brazil. However, in order to keep their lives unaffected, the children opposed their father's plans, and even used laws to limit the father's control over his own property. In the end, Toshiro Mifune set fire to the factory he had run all his life, hoping that his children would no longer be attached to money and leave Japan, which may be contaminated by radiation, but his crazy behavior failed to exchange for a ticket to Brazil, but let his family Sent him to a mental hospital.

In this film, the refined egoists have a strong anxiety about the nuclear war crisis and cannot fight against it, and the blind followers are not only powerless, but also hide or even deceive their awareness of the crisis. The two viewpoints in the film are extremely opposed. The children who want to stay in Japan believe that everyone will die sooner or later except their own life, and that war can happen anywhere, while the old man who insists on his own opinion shouts "I accept. The fate of death, but I don't accept murder." This is also the opinion of director Akira Kurosawa. In this film, the refined egoists have strong anxiety about the nuclear war crisis and cannot resist the anxiety, and the blind followers are not only powerless , but also to hide or even deceive their awareness of the crisis. In Akira Kurosawa's films, the protagonists are often in environments that are incomprehensible to ordinary people ("Redbeard", "Desire of Life", "Records of the Living People", etc.), they have their own right to choose, their own life and death themselves They are the ones who find and understand the meaning of life, not hearsay.

I am afraid that this contains Akira Kurosawa's reflection on World War II, that is, the conscious tendency to follow the crowd must be opposed. In the film, it is those ordinary people who gather together to maintain the stable status quo of life to obliterate an old man who called for a crisis. . This kind of thought-provoking phenomenon is the essence of this film.

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