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I Live in Fear (1955, Jp.) (aka
Record of a Living Being, or Ikimono no kiroku)
In writer/director Akira Kurosawa's family drama -
a tale of inter-generational rivalries during an age of atomic paranoia
in the mid-1950s (a decade after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki):
- the opening credits sequence - with views of traffic
at a busy Tokyo intersection, accompanied by theremin music
- the character of the lead protagonist: elderly, self-made,
wealthy, eccentric and age-degenerating steel foundry owner Mr. Kiichi
Nakajima (Toshiro Mifune), facing the debilitating, fear-stricken
dread of nuclear weapons and radioactive fallout, and stubbornly
determined to convince his reluctant, greedy, and entitled family
members to emigrate to a farm in Brazil for safety's sake
- the sequence of the overly-anxious, increasingly mad
industrialist Nakajima confusing bright flashes of lightning and
thunder for a nuclear attack, ducking at imagined blasts, and panicking
- the continuing domestic-family arbitration case, led
by a three-person tribunal (and arbitrator-counselor Dr. Harada (Takashi
Shimura), a dentist), to rule on the overly-worried Nakajima's rationality
and mental competency (and the fate of their inheritance) - and whether
he could sell his foundry and home, and uproot his entire family
to Brazil
- in the film's conclusion, Nakajima's desperate and
irrational decision to destroy his assets (by burning down his factory,
and unwittingly hurt his factory workers) to persuade his family
- afterwards, he was committed and placed in an insane asylum, where
he sat with his delusions while staring at the sun - (believing he
had safely escaped from Earth and transported elsewhere) - in a chilling
moment, he cried out as he pointed out the barred window at the rising
sun: "It's burning! It's burning! The earth is at last burning
away"
- the film's final juxtaposed, metaphoric shot of differing
generations: Dr. Harada slowly descended the sloped corridor of the
mental hospital after his visit, while Nakajima's mistress Asako
Kuribayashi (Akemi Negishi), bearing her little boy on her back,
walked up a stairway - they both passed each other without recognition
Passing By Each Other on Staircase
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Mr. Kiichi Nakajima
(Toshiro Mifune)
The Mad Nakajima's Destruction of His Own Assets
Nakajima: "It's Burning!"
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