published in "www.filmedvd.it" It 'difficult for us in the West of the millennium, to understand what may have been the level of fear in the 50s, including the Japanese, to the atomic bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki still burn and experiments nell'atollo Bikini H-bomb are reaching their peak. In such a scenario terror to this inhumane weapon of destruction fills the hearts of all Japanese, including Akira Kurosawa, who has extraordinary artist what feels compelled, almost required, to tell that fear through a movie.
"Ikimono no kiroku", also known as "I live in fear," is the testimony of a man eager to move with his family to Brazil to escape the nuclear threat. His fear will eventually become the final madness.
A film centered on a fear so bound up in those years was likely not pass the verdict of the time, but Kurosawa deftly transforms the fear of the H-bomb, in a more universal and eternal fear of death, thus creating a true demonstration of a living being, a man who desperately tries to escape the invisible threat that condemns him. An invisible threat, but existing, of which all have fears, but that most people are looking for to conceal living life everyday without damaging thoughts.
At this point, his story becomes our story. It also becomes the story of a man who cries "Wolf, wolf" and that no one hears, even believe that eventually all crazy. A man who can not escape, he is forced to stay where he is, living in fear. Yes, because "Testimony of a living being" is also a film about the impossibility of their own lives, because in the end you have to decide for others, your family, or completely unknown such an honor and obligation.
But ultimately the fate of all. At death you can not escape. There is a
interesting statement of the master Kurosawa related to this film. He said then that his first thought was to make a satirical film, but then decided to change the register because "as you can do satire on the H-bomb?". In 1964, another master, Stanley Kubrick, created a satirical film on the H-bomb and the threat of nuclear war. What does it mean that Kubrick had more satirical spirit of Kurosawa? The genius of the American film was more sophisticated than that of the Japanese film-maker? The answer may be found in its different periods in which the films were shot and two directors of different nationalities. Kurosawa, Japanese, lives on her skin and that of his friends fear of atomic power. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are too close in time and space do not yet feel the pain. The survivors still bear the marks upon deforming of those attacks. The lack of humor is understandable. Kubrick observes the Cold War ... with more coldness and detachment. That threat was still present, but less urgent and, above all dictated by military operations in the "war room" of U.S. and USSR and not real bombs. In short, "Satire is tragedy more time" as we remember Lenny Bruce. Kubrick had time, Kurosawa only tragedy.
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