Ikiru (生きる) is the perfect city planning movie.
Kurosawa's stunning rumination on life is also a perfect encapsulation of civic failure; or, the need for pornography in center cities.
![Film Forum · IKIRU Film Forum · IKIRU](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2fb81dba-0ff9-4165-90e3-a7aa678fa077_2050x1274.jpeg)
“Why can’t we have a park here?” — Ikiru‘s Watanabe Kanji, likely, and most city planners, likely.
About two-thirds the way through Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru the audience learns that the lead character, a Tolstoy-cum-Japanese sadman, has died, but not before the city finished his park.
In what amounted to his life’s work, completion of this small park was …
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