Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema

Goodwin’s analysis of Ikiru centers on the film’s use of “codes.” He defines “codes” as “structures that, through their coherence, make a text perceptible and comprehensible to its audience.”   What Goodwin means by this is that Kurosawa uses camera angles, blocking, objects and other cinematic techniques to make arguments in his film and express the themes to the audience. Goodwin takes specific scenes in the film and analyzes what they convey to the audience. One example of this is the scene at the end of the film, where Kimura sits down after being reprimanded by the new Section Chief; Goodwin states, “The brief rise and fall of his movement is the film’s final iteration of the visual figure of ascent and descent,” which he argues is a recurring theme throughout the film. Goodwin also demonstrates Kurosawa’s use of objects and actions as metaphors, for instance, when Watanabe grabs his chest in response to the writer’s query of whether his stomach hurts, Goodwin sees this as, “an image of emotional and spiritual pain at the heart of humanity.”   Watanabe doesn’t grab his stomach, because the real pain he is feeling is in his heart. Another object, which has allegorical value in the film, is Watanabe’s hat, which “has become a sign of [Watanabe’s] quest for a new approach to life.”
   Goodwin also shows how Kurosawa uses editing techniques and objects as narrative devices: “the photograph of [Watanabe’s] wife at the center of the altar is the psychological frame through which Watanabe begins to look into his past in narrative flashback.”   In the flashback in which Watanabe and his son are follow his dead wife’s hearse, Goodwin states that, “Metaphorically, the sequence places death as an immediate prospect within life and it suggests the narrative’s own patterns of approach and withdrawal from its protagonist’s death.”   Both of these are examples of scenes and objects that offer a self-reflexive view of the film that acknowledges the techniques of filmmaking.
   Goodwin’s book is different from the other works in the Bibliography, because it analyzes specific images and scenes in Ikiru, searching for allegorical meaning and self-reflexive commentary. The book definitely takes the position of Kurosawa as an auteur, suggesting that Kurosawa purposefully creates a continuity among the symbols and images in the film, in order give a deeper meaning to the film.

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Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema