Nervously fanning his face, bending his back and frowning his eyes, Kiichi Nakajima doesn't live in fear as much as he let fear live inside his body until it took a toll on his mind and on his family. The chronicles an inevitable tragedy, of a man who was too scared to live in peace, too proud to let his mind in peace, too stubborn to avoid an internal war with his family.
The old man, played by a 35-year old Toshiro Mifune, is the kind of aging patriarch who should inspire respect and obedience in a Japanese society resurrecting from the ashes of war and only starting to embrace modernity. But Nakajima is incapable to envision any future in this Japan, and neither the present nor the past can be of any help. Nakajima is scared of the Atomic age and is convinced that a Nuclear War is going to annihilate Japan, his fear resonates like an eschatological obsession, he doesn't fear the scenario, he's convinced of his imminence. I guess it's as if the graphic meltdown sequence of "Barefoot Gen" was playing in his mind like a broken record.
Fear is said to be a feeling anchored in the future and directly or indirectly connected with the fear of death, and it is true, the catch is that Nakajima is an old foundry owner, which means he's resourceful enough to look for a solution. Indeed, within his not-so irrational obsession, he found a 'rational' idea, which is to move all the family to Brazil, a country that would escape the Nuclear Holocaust. It's all a matter of convincing his family and the scope of his plan is too big and the stakes are so high that he doesn't care about exposing his mistresses and illegitimate children to the rest of the family. That's how desperate he is to save those he loves.
His sanity is inevitably questioned and the film opens with the convocation of a voluntary Domestic Court Counselor to arbitrate the case, Dr. Harada, a dentist, is played by Takashi Shimura, and watching him playing a younger person that Mifune gives the film an touch of cinematic weirdness despite the gravity of its theme. Anyway, Harada is a sane man who seems to take up the cudgels of Nakajima, he is aware that his obsessional fear might cloud his judgment but he believes the old man has a point, who would have thought two cities could be vaporized in one minute before August 1945? Who can tell such things couldn't happen again?
The family drama is so heavy-loaded that I found myself digressing from my reading of the film, as I was watching it, I was wondering whether it was an existential or political statement from Kurosawa. I was thinking, how would Nakajima or his family react to the Cuba Crisis of 62? Kennedy and Khrushchev handled it like civilized men, but what if it was Trump and Putin instead? To what degree should we trust democracy and remain confident that the leaders will do exactly as reason commands. I'm glad Trump didn't start any war yet after three years but I'm not sure I like the way he's constantly eyeing on Iran, not that I trust Iran's regime either.
Kurosawa was probably recovering from the WW2 demons and the relevance of Nakajima's fear is relayed by Harada. But the man is still an outsider, and the film mostly deals with the way Nakajima's shenanigans interferes with his family's interest and blurs all the cards of social conventions. The man who should be respected and trusted has forced his son (Minoru Chiaki) to sue him and force his mother, a traditional woman, to testify against her own husband, one of the collateral damages is to see that woman breaking marital duties for her children's sake. Brothers and sisters argue over their father's decisions, forcing the latter to resort to threats and even beatings. The scenes are depressing and doesn't leave much for optimism.
Indeed, what is going is a dialogue of the deaf, one that can only push the old man to take extreme measures to get money and buy the property in Brazil. He asks his mistresses for money, asks another one to mortgage her bar, the story reminded me of "Requiem for a Dream" where we follow the descent into madness of a woman driven by obsession and the climax of Nakajima' desperate maneuvers is simply devastating, because it doesn't make one person or one family unhappy, it destroys lives far beyond the intentions of Nakajima, confronting him to his own contradictions: how about his workers? How about the man from Brazil who'll live in Japan? How about the world?
"I Live in Fear" is a powerful anti-Nuclear movie in the way it depicted it through its most mundane form a fear rooted in everyone's mind, a mind so obsessed that any lightning would make him crawl on the floor and cover a little baby... maybe this says a lot about the way the world was going crazy after the war, the problem is that the family only wished to live in peace and ignore the risks because they couldn't do nothing, the gap was so blatant from the start the project was doomed to fail and the ending was inevitable. As an intelligent movie, it's a nice work, but it's rather depressing movie.
Maybe 'fear' is too ugly a condition to make for great entertainment, I could relate to Nakajima as someone who's afraid of flying to the point it created awkward situations with my family and made me miss great opportunities to travel in exotic places. That's one of the craziest things about fear, it's linked to the fear of death and yet it prevents you from living your life, more than any other thing, you move and act out of fear but at the end, your life was empty, static or wasted.
The old man, played by a 35-year old Toshiro Mifune, is the kind of aging patriarch who should inspire respect and obedience in a Japanese society resurrecting from the ashes of war and only starting to embrace modernity. But Nakajima is incapable to envision any future in this Japan, and neither the present nor the past can be of any help. Nakajima is scared of the Atomic age and is convinced that a Nuclear War is going to annihilate Japan, his fear resonates like an eschatological obsession, he doesn't fear the scenario, he's convinced of his imminence. I guess it's as if the graphic meltdown sequence of "Barefoot Gen" was playing in his mind like a broken record.
Fear is said to be a feeling anchored in the future and directly or indirectly connected with the fear of death, and it is true, the catch is that Nakajima is an old foundry owner, which means he's resourceful enough to look for a solution. Indeed, within his not-so irrational obsession, he found a 'rational' idea, which is to move all the family to Brazil, a country that would escape the Nuclear Holocaust. It's all a matter of convincing his family and the scope of his plan is too big and the stakes are so high that he doesn't care about exposing his mistresses and illegitimate children to the rest of the family. That's how desperate he is to save those he loves.
His sanity is inevitably questioned and the film opens with the convocation of a voluntary Domestic Court Counselor to arbitrate the case, Dr. Harada, a dentist, is played by Takashi Shimura, and watching him playing a younger person that Mifune gives the film an touch of cinematic weirdness despite the gravity of its theme. Anyway, Harada is a sane man who seems to take up the cudgels of Nakajima, he is aware that his obsessional fear might cloud his judgment but he believes the old man has a point, who would have thought two cities could be vaporized in one minute before August 1945? Who can tell such things couldn't happen again?
The family drama is so heavy-loaded that I found myself digressing from my reading of the film, as I was watching it, I was wondering whether it was an existential or political statement from Kurosawa. I was thinking, how would Nakajima or his family react to the Cuba Crisis of 62? Kennedy and Khrushchev handled it like civilized men, but what if it was Trump and Putin instead? To what degree should we trust democracy and remain confident that the leaders will do exactly as reason commands. I'm glad Trump didn't start any war yet after three years but I'm not sure I like the way he's constantly eyeing on Iran, not that I trust Iran's regime either.
Kurosawa was probably recovering from the WW2 demons and the relevance of Nakajima's fear is relayed by Harada. But the man is still an outsider, and the film mostly deals with the way Nakajima's shenanigans interferes with his family's interest and blurs all the cards of social conventions. The man who should be respected and trusted has forced his son (Minoru Chiaki) to sue him and force his mother, a traditional woman, to testify against her own husband, one of the collateral damages is to see that woman breaking marital duties for her children's sake. Brothers and sisters argue over their father's decisions, forcing the latter to resort to threats and even beatings. The scenes are depressing and doesn't leave much for optimism.
Indeed, what is going is a dialogue of the deaf, one that can only push the old man to take extreme measures to get money and buy the property in Brazil. He asks his mistresses for money, asks another one to mortgage her bar, the story reminded me of "Requiem for a Dream" where we follow the descent into madness of a woman driven by obsession and the climax of Nakajima' desperate maneuvers is simply devastating, because it doesn't make one person or one family unhappy, it destroys lives far beyond the intentions of Nakajima, confronting him to his own contradictions: how about his workers? How about the man from Brazil who'll live in Japan? How about the world?
"I Live in Fear" is a powerful anti-Nuclear movie in the way it depicted it through its most mundane form a fear rooted in everyone's mind, a mind so obsessed that any lightning would make him crawl on the floor and cover a little baby... maybe this says a lot about the way the world was going crazy after the war, the problem is that the family only wished to live in peace and ignore the risks because they couldn't do nothing, the gap was so blatant from the start the project was doomed to fail and the ending was inevitable. As an intelligent movie, it's a nice work, but it's rather depressing movie.
Maybe 'fear' is too ugly a condition to make for great entertainment, I could relate to Nakajima as someone who's afraid of flying to the point it created awkward situations with my family and made me miss great opportunities to travel in exotic places. That's one of the craziest things about fear, it's linked to the fear of death and yet it prevents you from living your life, more than any other thing, you move and act out of fear but at the end, your life was empty, static or wasted.