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.
“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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