Ikiru has the timeless quality of a literary masterpiece; at the same time it is a searing portrait of modern society in which individual will is the vassal to an impotent bureaucracy. Ikiru tells of a municipal government functionary, one Mr. Watanabe (the marvelous actor Takashi Shimura), Chief, Citizens' Section, who habitually wraps red tape around the most urgent entreaty: a mother's plea for a park where a cesspool now exists. Twenty-five years behind a desk piled high with papers, Watanabe is looking at his watch when we first meet him-a habitual gesture that will soon gain new meaning when he learns he has terminal cancer. Watanabe's metamorphosis from Mummy (his office nickname) to conscious being is one of the great transformations in cinema, with no special effects required. As he begins to reject his past-his government service, his devotion to an unworthy son-into his life comes a curious novelist, a sort of kinder, gentler Mephistopheles who shows Watanabe a night on the town, dazzling in its possibilities, but also gleaming in mirrored reflections. A cinematic tour-de-force that travels in and out of time-frames like a camera of the mind, Ikiru's most basic challenge is contained in its title: to live.