Ikiru ("To Live")

While my mind finds for me the investment strategy for 2011, I want to remember the 1952 film Ikiru. I saw it ages ago, in black and white, in the Liniers neighborhood cinema my father and me used to go. Kanji Watanabe (in my memory is Mr Suzuki) has imprinted in my mind everything about the Japanese. Life is very cruel in Japan. The scenes I most remember are his work in the Municipality, stamping documents with his red stamp; the directness when the doctor says to him in his poor clinic that has incurable stomach cancer; the scene when he decides to tell his disease to his heartless son but overhears him discussing that he will sell the ancestral house after "the old man dies"; and his humiliation by the young city politician who closes the door in his face. A film full of silent cruelty and suffering, just as life is. The clip is a satire of the film.