love with a young girl
, before the red lips fade, before the
enthusiasm becomes cold , and
no one knows what will happen
...
Kurosawa Akira's "Desire of Life" tells the story of how an old man lives from death And the story of death. Shimura Joe's performance is perfect.
1. He is facing death.
Kanji Watanabe is the chief of the Citizens Division of the city government. He is ill and has stomach cancer. This government employee who has worked diligently for 30 years was frightened by the sudden death warning.
2. He is already dead, in a huge dead body.
In fact, at the beginning of the film, the voice-over tells the audience: "This person has been dead for twenty years." This death is naturally not a physical death, but is the death of the mind.
In this huge bureaucracy, it seems that they can only follow the rules and perfunctory responsibility. A group of women came to reflect on the problem of stinky drains in the residential area. Their problems were pushed from the citizen class to the civil engineering class, the park class, the hygiene class... and then back again.
In such an environment, Watanabe has long since become a dead person. If he was still alive when he was young, then twenty years ago, when his wife died, he did not re-marry for the sake of his son. Since then, it has been a lifeless repetition.
3. He wants to live, and Mephisto doesn't help
. He doesn't want to die. When death came, he realized that he was so afraid of death. He wanted to ask for help, but his son pushed him away. When he was sitting in his son's room waiting for his son's return, what he heard in the dark was that his son and his daughter-in-law were going to build a house with his pension, and his son said, "Is he going to take the money to the coffin". He was silent.
He wants to end his life. However, in the end, he still didn't take that bottle of sleeping pills. He met a stranger in a tavern, so he poured out his troubles to this person. He was always frugal and would spend 50,000 yuan. He wanted to taste another kind of life. The latter is a popular novelist, infected by Watanabe's pain, excited by Watanabe's desire for a "pleasure" transformation, to act as a happy devil, leading the profligate Watanabe to "life."
Feasting and feasting. Dancing girl geisha. Thousands of people moving. Demons dance. However, these noises all showed an air of death.
on the strip. Watanabe stared at the shaking flesh, almost dizzy. The vulgar novelist on the side shouted, "This is not art! But it is more direct than art!" Is that life? It was more like the festering part of the body was red and swollen like a peach blossom.
Watanabe and the novelist come to a high-end nightclub. The pair of dancing men and women who embraced each other seemed to be soulless bodies. The pianist was playing an extravagant voice, "Let's order a song." The drunk Watanabe remembered an old love song, and he sang it in a bleak and hopeless way:
Life is so short ,
girl, let's fall in love ,
take advantage of the popularity Before the lips fade, before the
enthusiasm becomes cold ,
no one knows what will happen
...
4. Resurrection, or die properly In the
civic class, a young girl can't stand it anymore. She is resigning. She wants to ask Watanabe, the section principal, to stamp the letter of resignation. She came to see Watanabe, who was absent from work. She didn't know what happened to the teacher who had not asked for leave in the past 30 years.
Watanabe found in the girl the health and vitality he admired. He accompanied her out, gave her something, and invited her to dinner. He even invited her out every night.
The girl finally became impatient: "What are you doing?"
Watanabe explained the reason: "I envy you, why are you so energetic?" The
girl said, she just eats and works, it's very simple, she takes out her own work in a toy factory Rabbit Toy, "You should find one thing..."
The birthday song was playing in the restaurant, and someone had a birthday. Watanabe grabbed the rabbit toy and rushed down the stairs. The birthday girl went upstairs and passed Watanabe.
Watanabe returned to the citizen class, he wanted to break through the resistance, solve the problem of the stinky ditch, and build a park there.
The park is built. Watanabe is dead.
5. Life is so difficult
In the second half of the movie, Akira Kurosawa set the scene in the mourning hall. Watanabe's colleagues started a long debate and quarrel during the wake. Although the beneficiary women came together to offer incense to Watanabe, his colleagues did not seem to think that the park was built by Watanabe. There was only one middle-aged man, who had never been drinking, and shed tears for Watanabe.
He only fulfilled the duties of a clerk?
Some people say that there will be no plans for parks without councillors and deputy mayors to run for. As a result, the fact is that the deputy mayor was really unable to withstand Watanabe's insistent proposal and had to agree. And the triads also threaten the transition side because they want to build a restaurant street. Watanabe has repeatedly urged and asked other departments to participate in the construction of the park, speeding up the progress, and begging every employee.
So why did Watanabe do this?
Not even his son knew. His brother thought that Watanabe's temperament changed because of having a woman. Although the autopsy was stomach cancer, everyone thought Watanabe didn't know. Because he didn't even tell his son.
However, slowly, the colleague recalled the past and understood that Watanabe actually knew that he had a terminal illness.
That's right! So, are we all like Watanabe?
No! When everyone else said that, a drunken colleague shouted, "You won't! You're not Watanabe!" Right
. Not everyone can be like Watanabe. The drinking men fell silent. Finally, they started to get excited and say, "Well, the park is due to Watanabe. We have to be like him."
The last person to see Watanabe came on the night when his colleagues kept a vigil for Watanabe. That's a policeman. On a cold snowy night, he saw a man swinging happily on a swing in the park, singing a song.
6. How short life is
The next day, when there was another complaint in the Citizens Class, the clerk was still - "Please come to the Civil Engineering Class." The
huge bureaucracy is not so easy to change.
The middle-aged colleague who once shed tears for Watanabe saw the same citizen class the next day, and all he could do was drop a chair. Finally, he helped him up. After get off work, he came to the newly built park. Children play in the park. The sky is full of afterglow. Watanabe once said here: "It's so beautiful, but I don't have time to appreciate it."
When their mother called them home for dinner, only the swing that Watanabe once sat on was swinging back and forth, and it seemed that Watanabe could still be heard. The song hummed with joy that night:
Life is so short , let’s fall in love,
girl
, before the red lips fade, and before the
enthusiasm becomes cold ,
no one knows what tomorrow
will be, how short is life,
girl, fall in love
, before the black hair Before fading, before the
flame of love goes out
, today is gone forever
August 5, 2005
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