Connection
Will to Live is a film of genre Drama directed by Kaneto Shindō with Rentarō Mikuni
Will to Live (1999)
If you like this film, let us know!
Add to a movie listWill to Live (生きたい, Ikitai) is a 1999 Japanese film directed by Kaneto Shindo and starring Rentarō Mikuni and Shinobu Otake. It is based on the story of The Ballad of Narayama updated to the present day, with the substitution of putting a parent into an old people's home for the abandonment of the original. The film won the Golden St. George and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival.
Synopsis
Yasukichi (Rentarō Mikuni) visits "Ubasuteyama", a mountain where, in the past, old people were left to die. He is a regular at a bar. While at the bar he defecates in his clothes. The bar owner (Naoko Otani) literally kicks him out of the bar. Lying on the pavement, he is run over by a man on a bicycle, who turns out to be a doctor. His daughter, Tokuko (Shinobu Otake), is awakened by a phone call from the hospital asking her to collect Yasukichi. She tries to decline, saying she has bipolar disorder and cannot look after her father, but eventually is forced to take him in. Yasukichi has stolen a book from the hospital about Obasuteyama and begins reading it to Tokuko. The story of Ubasuteyama is told on the screen, in a black and white film.Actors
Rentarō Mikuni
(Yasukichi)
Shinobu Ōtake
Akira Emoto
(Doctor)
Hideko Yoshida
(Old woman at village)
Masahiko Tsugawa (津川 雅彦)
(Village chief)
Comments
Leave comment :
Suggestions of similar film to Will to Live
There are 121 films with the same actors, 32 films with the same director, 87111 with the same cinematographic genres (including 11844 with exactly the same 2 genres than Will to Live), to have finally 70 suggestions of similar films.If you liked Will to Live, you will probably like those similar films :
Owl (2003)
, 1h59Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama, Comedy, Crime
Actors Akira Emoto, Shinobu Ōtake, Ayumi Itō, Tomorowo Taguchi
Rating65%
Around 1980, two women, a mother and a daughter, the last occupants of a farming village called "Kibogaoka" for Japanese returnees from Manchuria, are slowly starving to death. As one of the women contemplates eating a lizard, the other suggests a better way to survive. They telephone a dam construction site and offer themselves as prostitutes. A worker comes to visit them, has sex with the mother, and then they give him their "special drink". This causes him to foam at the mouth, emit animal noises, and then die. They cart his body off and celebrate getting his money.
Postcard (2010)
, 1h54Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Origin Japon
Genres Drama, War, Romance
Actors Etsushi Toyokawa, Shinobu Ōtake, Akira Emoto, Mitsuko Baishō, Ren Osugi, Maiko Kawakami
Rating70%
Near the end of the Second World War, Sadazo Morikawa (Naomasa Musaka) is one of a group of 100 overaged conscripts for the Japanese navy assigned to cleaning duty. Once the cleaning duty has finished, the members are chosen by lottery for various duties. Sadazo is assigned to serve in the Philippines. He thinks he will not survive, and asks a comrade, Matsuyama (Etsushi Toyokawa) to return a postcard to his wife, Tomoko (Shinobu Otake), and tell her that he received it before he died.
Ryûri no kishi (1956)
, 1h30Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama
Actors Mie Kitahara, Nobuko Otowa, Rentarō Mikuni, Yoshiko Tsubouchi, Nobuo Kaneko, Sachiko Murase
By Player (2000)
Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama, Romance
Actors Naoto Takenaka, Rinko Kikuchi, Hideko Yoshida, Keiko Oginome, Nobuko Otowa, Kaneto Shindō
Rating68%
The first part of the film shows Tonoyama talking to a waitress, Kimie (Keiko Oginome), in a coffee shop. He then meets her father and asks him for permission to marry Kimie. The father asks him to first divorce his existing wife, Asako (Hideko Yoshida). In fact he is not married to Asako. To prevent him marrying Kimie, Asako then registers them as married.
The Naked Island (1960)
, 1h34Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Origin Japon
Genres Drama
Themes Seafaring films, Transport films, Films about the labor movement
Actors Nobuko Otowa, Taiji Tonoyama
Rating79%
The film depicts a small family, a husband and wife and two sons, struggling to get by on a tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea, over the course of a year. They are the island's only occupants, and survive by farming. They must repeatedly carry the water for their plants and themselves in a row boat from a neighboring island.
Actress (1956)
, 1h44Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama
Actors Nobuko Otowa, Chikako Hosokawa, Shinsuke Ashida, Sumiko Hidaka, Taketoshi Naito, Tanie Kitabayashi
Rating68%
The Wolves (1955)
, 2hDirected by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama
Actors Nobuko Otowa, Jun Hamamura, Sanae Takasugi, Ichirō Sugai (菅井一郎), Taiji Tonoyama, Bokuzen Hidari
Rating69%
The Ditch (1954)
Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama
Themes Seafaring films, Transport films
Actors Nobuko Otowa, Jūkichi Uno, Taiji Tonoyama, Sō Yamamura, Kamatari Fujiwara, Tsutomu Shimomoto
Rating71%
Toku, a factory worker (Taiji Tonoyama) gives food to a starving woman, Tsuru (Nobuko Otowa), who then follows him home. He shares a shack in a shanty village in Kawasaki with his friend Pin-chan (Jūkichi Uno). The two men try to get rid of her but then let her stay when she gives them money. Tsuru tells the people of the village that she lost her job due to a strike, then was robbed of her severance pay, then sold to a brothel in Tsuchiura. She ran away with a friend from Kawasaki. Toku and Pin-chan sell her to a geisha house and spend the money. She is thrown out. The owner demands his money back. Tsuru earns the money to pay their debt by working as a prostitute outside the station. The other prostitutes beat her. She fends them off with a policeman's revolver and is then shot dead by the police.
Onna no issho (1953)
, 2h16Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Genres Drama
Actors Nobuko Otowa, Koreya Senda, Jūkichi Uno, Eitarō Shindō, Haruko Sugimura, Haruo Tanaka
Miniature (1953)
, 2h11Directed by Kaneto Shindō
Origin Japon
Genres Drama
Actors Nobuko Otowa, Isuzu Yamada, Sumiko Hidaka, Sō Yamamura, Osamu Takizawa, Tanie Kitabayashi
Rating70%
Ginko (Nobuko Otowa) works as a geisha to support her poor family, even though she has trained as a shoemaker to work with her father (Jūkichi Uno). She works first in Tokyo, then in northern Japan, and then in Tokyo again. She catches pneumonia and is carried home to die, but in the end her younger sister Tokiko dies and she lives.