Episode 211: To Live and Die in Kurosawa's "Ikiru"

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, according to a recent study with, I'm sure, just impeccable methods and measures,

[00:01:28] people who watched Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, Ikiru, experienced a significant reduction in death anxiety. So you've now watched Ikiru, do you fear death less? That's such an interesting question. I literally finished watching it like an hour before this recording and throughout the

[00:01:46] movie I started feeling death anxiety, like visceral death anxiety. And by the end, it's true, I felt less. Less than before you watched it or less than at the peak? Less than because it hasn't been in, it's hard to know whether that's going to have a

[00:02:03] lasting effect or I'm sure compared to other times when I've had death anxiety, being confronted with death by the end of this movie made me feel less anxious than having been confronted with death in my daily life with something else, if that makes sense.

[00:02:18] So is that like this is not necessarily good comic opening segment stuff, but like is it something that just hits you like all of a sudden and then all of a sudden you start like really getting stressed out about it? Like how is it phenomenologically?

[00:02:33] Yeah, oh, like the death anxiety. Yeah. So what happens is when I'm faced with death in everyday life, there's like a point where if I just ignore it, if I don't let it seep in long enough and I just move on to the next thing, then I'm fine.

[00:02:51] If I actually start thinking about things like the person actually dying, you know, like or their last moments, then it actually starts for me to resemble or is the beginnings of a panic attack. So yeah, so it's like, you know, it's not it's not that severe given the

[00:03:13] frequency, but it's very uncomfortable. Like it's actually, I was just thinking today about how I remember talking when I was in college to somebody who worked in a hospice and obviously they that were counselors who worked in hospice. They see death all the time.

[00:03:26] And I told them in college, I said, I can't believe that you can deal with this. And I remember them telling me, no, actually, I'm existentially just healthier because because I deal with death all the time.

[00:03:35] And I've always thought I just do too much avoidance of it because I avoid the thought I avoid the discomfort of death. Like I never really just let like, you know, face it. And I think that's what when you and your ilk talk about like hallucinogenic

[00:03:49] drug experiences, maybe that's just allowing you to sort of process the information about death in a little bit of a more expansive way, not in just like the super restricted, like I'm losing everything. Like in that last moment. Yeah. I mean, I don't know my hallucinogenic experiences.

[00:04:08] Haven't I don't think been a significant thing for me when it comes to like how I feel about death. But you were already low on that. Yeah, I was already low on it. I think that's really interesting. And not only low, but like non-existent pretty much. Yeah.

[00:04:22] Like, and then there was a little blip where I kind of felt it like, and then I feel like I don't even have that anymore. I'm back to being just low. Like, you know, when you go, you go.

[00:04:32] That's kind of how you feel, you know, plus, you know, I'll probably just live on as a prankster spirit afterwards. You know, Tamela or Loki, we can talk about that at some this more at some other time because I'm kind of curious as to

[00:04:46] like your when you think about your own death, whether you do you mind wander about your like your last moments, like how you're going to die and what you're going to be thinking. Yeah. I mean, I'm mind wander a lot and and I wonder if that's

[00:05:00] a cause or an effect. Like my goal, like here's my how I'd like to die is just, you know, I'm old. I'm not like so old that like my last 10 years have just been a misery and burden on like me and like everyone, like the people I love.

[00:05:17] I mean, it's not been a burden. Why your age? Right. I mean, I'm all I'm always just to tie like a little bit of a burden. But then like I want to go, I want to have some disease where it's like, OK, this is it.

[00:05:29] And then I want to go into hospice and I just want to do like morphine for like until until I until that's it. Right. Fuck that like desire to die with a clear head. I want to die in bliss. Yeah. I want to die on morphine. Yeah.

[00:05:45] And do you want to be a do you want to be a way some people want to be asleep when they die? I guess I want to be asleep. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of want to know when I'm fading.

[00:05:57] I want to at least have that last experience. Yeah, I actually want that too. Yeah. And then because it does seem like people, you know, people report like it looked like they recognize something or, you know. Yeah.

[00:06:11] And now I need by the way, just to go snort as an axe. Yeah. But you know what, Tamler? I'm jealous. I'm actually I'm envious. Oh, yeah. You're a fear of death. Okay. Good transition. Before we go to that though, like we should say that the

[00:06:28] second segment we are going to be talking about, let's see. Kant. No, we're going to be talking about Ikiru's, Ikiru, the movie by Ikiru Kurosawa that we've just. But before before that we came across an article that given Tamler's love of dogs and my love of science, I

[00:06:46] thought was a nice sort of an interface. This is a recent article by a researcher named Amalia, Amalia Bastos from the University of Auckland and others. I didn't write down all of their names and it's from Psych Science and it's on dogs and jealousy.

[00:07:02] So I take it as both dog owners and we've owned many dogs. This is it's obviously true to us. The dogs have jealousy, right? Yes. Yeah. It's sort of like there's no other there's no other explanation that I could find that would be that would parsimoniously

[00:07:22] account for the behaviors of my dog. But but it hasn't it hasn't been demonstrated scientifically in the way that would satisfy people, especially people who study emotions because they have all these criteria for what my count is emotion and and jealousy specifically has

[00:07:38] been kind of framed or classified as one of these social emotions that tend to require more cognitive capabilities. So in order to feel jealous or or shame or embarrassment, you know, people think that you need at least to have some

[00:07:53] minimally some conception of yourself and a conception of another and you know, some representation of a relationship. It seems like a pretty cognitively heavy kind of emotion to experience. But other people have actually tried to demonstrate the dogs

[00:08:12] have a jealousy in the lab and they've done the authors think to report that there's been at least four successful studies that show jealous behavior in the lab. And what they did in those studies was have a condition where the owner of the dog is interacting with another

[00:08:30] dog or they're interacting with an inanimate object and they're performing the same behaviors presumably. Like they're petting inanimate objects and calling saying good dog and dogs appear to behave in a more characteristically jealous way. Their behaviors appear to fit jealousy more when they're

[00:08:48] petting another dog than when they're petting an inanimate object. But those those studies have had this confound where they've not really looked to see whether the mere presence of another dog might be inducing this. So like it could be as the others point out that just

[00:09:04] there being another dog in the room gets them excited or anxious or territorial and that's why the dogs are starting to act up. So so in this study which I thought was clever design what they did was they they use these fake dogs these

[00:09:18] like big furry fake dogs and they tied up the dog the subject the participant which is the dog and they had the owner sit I think five meters away and they showed the dog this fake dog. They even talk about how from five meters away dogs can't

[00:09:37] distinguish are real from a fake dog. So so what they did was they showed the owner sitting with a dog in front of it but then they hid they occluded the dog and they had the owner obviously they could they could still see above like the

[00:09:53] waist of the of the owner and the owners like doing the petting motion and going saying like good boy good dog or whatever. Right. And they really tightly controlled what they were able to say like they couldn't use like training commands or anything that might other than what

[00:10:10] was in the script and they also occluded their eyes so like the owner couldn't see or hear what the dog was doing so that there wouldn't be any sort of like demand effects they weren't react and then they compared that to the

[00:10:25] dog owner petting a cylinder with fur. So obviously not a dog and doing the same exact thing like saying good dog petting it. And this is one of my favorite parts what their measurement of jealous behavior and I think this

[00:10:38] fits with at least my intuition and my observing of my dog is that they say jealousy is very much an approach behavior like the dog wants to get in between you and the thing. So they had the dog tied to a thing that

[00:10:50] measures force in Newtons in fake Newtons and so they could take a measurement of like how much the dog was scrambling to get to the owner. So what they find is that the dog in the even when they can't see the other dog but the owner

[00:11:08] is petting it there they exert much more force than when they're petting a cylinder and saying the same things. Like the amount of force that they would that they would pull for if there were four fig Newtons. Exactly.

[00:11:20] I mean it is a cool study and I know I you know I'm always I always remember the first time I ever saw Laurie Santos go give a talk about theory of mind and was it was it at the conference where you saw me?

[00:11:31] Yeah, I think we're where we met. Yeah. And you gave the chip. Yeah, exactly. And like and I always remember like you know like theory of mind I think in capuchin monkeys or something and then everyone was kind of

[00:11:45] like a little bit of a little bit of a little thing and then everyone was kind of trying to come up with alternate explanations, alternate hypothesis like no they can't have that and I'm sure that's what happens with dogs. But if you've had a dog and in particular

[00:12:00] if you've had two dogs like I've had for the last 10 years there is absolutely no way that Charlie not Omar Omar actually it's like a little different in this way but Charlie feels so much jealousy when I get give attention to Omar that Omar has compersion.

[00:12:18] Omar likes to be like a cock. He likes to be cock open. Yeah, seriously like he's weird perverted more perverted animal than Charlie who is just you know like as a hound but he will we will give him we just get he was the first dog

[00:12:39] we give him more attention because he needs it more but then if we then go to Omar and start giving him attention he just starts going oh no like what are you doing? Like and he does that to the point where it's

[00:12:52] like almost annoying and he was and he really just he gets like stressed out and upset when we give attention to Omar and like never mind like another dog. Yeah, so yeah it's like it's it's obvious but I'm glad they did this because I'm glad

[00:13:12] I don't want there to be doubt. Well Charlie is unbelievable because he's so jealous and needy at times and he does like the depth of his love is like greater than I've ever seen in another animal or maybe person but like he's also like pretty

[00:13:27] stubborn and wants to do things on his own terms so like the nerve of him like a lot of the times if I kind of feel like you know I've had a hard day and just wanted someone like to snuggle with or something if he's not into it

[00:13:39] he's just like no fuck you and but that's where Omar comes in. Little cock Omar will come on the bed like and just you know he'll do it. Your your polyamorous strategy pays off because you cover all your bases. Exactly. I really like reading when people come

[00:13:55] up with these clever ways of like avoiding compounds to me it's like a it's just a cool little they've built a cool little way to address to address some of those criticism and it is true that like there is such a strong strong this is like the

[00:14:12] echoes of behaviorism being so dominant where like people don't want to attribute mental states to animals at all. And so the the burden is high to demonstrate something like that so the guy who used yuck pangsep who used to argue that rats can tickle

[00:14:29] any rats can be tickled and they ended they laugh the the amount of sort of vitriol from the sort of behaviorist camp of researchers who are still there and very strong like they would come up with all kinds of alternative explanations for for this behavior in the rats

[00:14:45] that didn't rely on attributing an emotion to them right. And they're convoluted that's the funny thing is like I don't know like this is what struck me with the loris antos and it probably wasn't as bad as what you're talking about but

[00:14:57] it's like it seems like the simplest explanation is they just have theory of mind or they feel these emotions where they can tickle but like you're right that the burden is heavily on the people who attribute to what they think happens there's this like fear

[00:15:14] of anthropomorphizing or of that that seems to trump but I don't know what the like theoretical basis for making that be the the burden you know what I mean like yeah yeah it was I think because the push to be seen as a real science in the 50s

[00:15:31] was was so high and so influenced by positivism and the focus was only on behavior and like combined with the fact that behaviorism did do a good job of explaining predicting and controlling the behavior of so many animals that they viewed it as successful

[00:15:47] it just became behaviorism in the in like in the sort of sense of you know the paradigm that needed to be it's like dogmatic and the way that you're dogmatic about a little bit yeah um the it's funny that the term anthropomorphism was originally

[00:16:04] meant attributing human traits to gods who who uh did not like that that was the error the error is like the gods are so much you know grander than us don't attribute your petty jealousy to them right all right which we definitely

[00:16:18] do i mean like the greek gods are just like humans like melrose place it's like melrose place yeah exactly I think like dogs um and and I will say like I charlie has especially my dog um because then i've had a lot of

[00:16:36] dogs too but he I think he has like emotional layers and depths that like couldn't like jealousy is just the scratching the surface for what he feels like I feel like like there are time both Eliza and I have had this experience independently is like when we

[00:16:52] come home and we're not giving attention to Omar we give attention to charlie and then we just kind of look at our phones for a second out of how oh yeah yeah he gets like disappointed like almost like absolutely yeah so my

[00:17:04] dog uh I don't have multiple dogs but I have two cats in this house but uh who and he is always jealous of the cats if if the cats are on niki at all he he knows that he can't jump in an attack but he just sits there

[00:17:20] vigilantly like in the minute the cats sort of leave he jumps like a second but even worse he's so he's so bonded to niki that if I'm like next to her and I like hug her touch her physically right dives in between us

[00:17:35] like all I have to do is pretend to make kissy noises and I do it all the time just to fuck with him and he just dives and plops his body on like as if he's saving her from yeah maybe yeah maybe there's something to that yeah

[00:17:51] Jen actually sometimes gets jealous when I'm fucking the dog why do you do it when she's there I I don't most of the time but sometimes it's like hotter if you sneak in a quickie you know more like forbidden in the perium closet

[00:18:07] like my previous dog Tess was she was just an unbelievable interpreter of my mental state like she could she knew my feelings even like better than any human could have in terms of just like if I was just a little upset or annoyed or something like that

[00:18:23] she would react to that I mean we bred you know like it's it's pretty clear that we bred traits where they would pay more attention to us right and yeah like it's it's kind of it's fascinating what we've done I I look at my dog who's

[00:18:37] a mutt but probably has some border call you on it according to the the person who who rescued him and but like he does things like pointer behavior like I've never it's just odd like he'll like lift up the yeah lift up the arm

[00:18:50] and like look at his toy and I'm like you're not hunting motherfucker yeah it's useless to me tested that too yeah yeah I think they were like really because we've evolved and also like we've evolved together yeah like dogs have been around certainly in time for

[00:19:07] us to also evolve sort of behaviors in relation to them or dispositions and like the kind of bonds and the kind of connection is is extremely like deep and yeah kind of undeniable if you've had it like you almost wonder with some of these people are raising

[00:19:27] objections like you haven't had a dog right or maybe they just think I am too prone even myself to project my my traits onto a like a machine right I mean and like kids is even an entirely different category too where the theories theories of development

[00:19:48] as much as there were theories of development and behaviorism were ridiculous for just anybody who's had a kid would be willing to to say a lot more about say innate tendencies in one kid versus another kid right like there's there's some shit that they

[00:20:05] come into the world with like they just they just are neurotic or positive like from the moment they start interacting with you it's interesting like some of these things might be defensible from like a scientific perspective others are just it just seems like an accident that

[00:20:23] where the default position is who has the burden of proof in terms of you know like you know with child development stuff doesn't seem like it's more plausible that they will you know they would have to be much older before they could have any kind

[00:20:40] of sophisticated cognitive abilities same with the with animals it doesn't seem like it's it's obvious that the burden of proof should be on the people who are trying to impute to them qualities that that yes that we have but also like we're mammals and so like

[00:20:57] there's why should we shouldn't we think that other mammals besides us have those things you know there's even like in a more local sort of local as in smaller level of theory you have so so my answer that was going to be you know the ebb and flow

[00:21:14] of theories changes the default assumptions obviously but you even have it like not not with any great paradigm shifts but for a long time so in what we call social cognition which was the sort of marriage of social psychology and kind of psychology for a while if

[00:21:32] you made a claim about an emotion the burden of proof would be on you because the default assumption was this could be explained solely in terms of cognition right you don't need an emotion to explain it that shifted like i in within my time like in the

[00:21:46] nineties and the early two thousands the science of emotion became so dominant that now you don't you don't get any pushback if you say like this was an emotion so what would be an example if somebody said like um if you acted resentfully towards

[00:22:02] somebody or something yeah so they might say this a lot of this took took place in debates about motivation people used to favor these motivational theories that you have a drive to do this and people just uh kind of with the computer metaphor

[00:22:17] would try to find ways in which no this is information processing and like a goal hierarchy can be you can understand it just in terms of like maximizing the output not you don't have to pause it that like i i'm like i have this hot

[00:22:29] state or this um so it's like rational choice theory exactly exactly that kind of thing um and and and now it's almost the other way around like well i think uh former guest and friend of the show bob frank might have played a role in yeah for sure

[00:22:45] yeah that shift right sure and it's funny we you read passions within reason and what is that 88 you can see that he's arguing a case that people wouldn't feel you need to argue it's hard for right exactly yeah exactly now now it's sort of like well yeah

[00:23:03] that's uh and like you're right that it's changed over the like course of our careers which are roughly like the same length because i didn't i don't think i would have thought that for the first five years or six years it was

[00:23:15] like yeah this is what you have to do and he's right this is what these people think and and it has really changed i always for my students always point to the the first publication that i ever got was a paper that i titled the role

[00:23:26] of emotions in moral judgment because in the year 2000 i could like i could title paper like that because it was like oh emotions in moral judgment like and now if you try to title it now they'd be like what emotions in what

[00:23:40] judgment like what are you talking about like of course emotions play a role in moral judgment right at the time it was just they play a role yeah exactly exactly and it's like well yeah like colberg's cognitive development that was all dominant like all but yeah it

[00:23:54] was that's right it's that's a big part of this too i mean not for the moral stuff not for the theory of mind stuff but maybe also that you know like because isn't that also some kind of step is when you get theory of mind

[00:24:09] that allows you and so maybe that's why they're so stingy about offering theory of mind to any other creek any other species yeah maybe so like the colberg you get directly from piaget so you go this is actually how you go you go

[00:24:23] cont to Rawls to piaget to colberg and that influenced sort of like the lack of emotion in moral judgment when when we started doing this shit back in the early 2000s but in sort of more traditional cognitive development like people like piaget all of course

[00:24:38] believed that there was mind and there was the ability for the child to like represent things and he did a lot of that early work showing you know the emergence of certain cognitive abilities like everybody knows the sort of the the tasks where you fill

[00:24:51] uh a tall skinny glass and you ask kids will it fit in this short fat glass and they say no that conservation of matter stuff so he was positing that there were like complex cognitive things going on in the child over time

[00:25:06] and then behaviorism hit and then then it was erased it was like erased and then you had to let then go prove that kids actually have a theory of mind we okay yeah so wait you're just to be clear because i don't think the dates

[00:25:18] would work for this you're not saying that Rawls in cont influence Rawls Rawls influenced piaget you're saying that it's like that's an analogy it's no no no i am saying content you're saying Rawls in uh i thought Piaget was writing before Rawls

[00:25:36] oh sorry sorry it was cons to Piaget and Colberg who is equally influenced by Rawls and Piaget so that's how yeah that's how it works you're right um Colberg loved Rawls and had a very contient notion of of morality and Piaget loved cons so

[00:25:52] if you like look at Piaget's books they were like child's conception of time the child's conception of space these were all like the content categories the category yeah interesting yeah that's funny that's yeah that's right Colberg is uh he had this like stages of

[00:26:06] more morality and then it goes like utilitarian and then yeah exactly transcend to the next yeah the final mature stage is when you're a categorical imperative basically yeah yeah that's it and you know Colberg and Rawls i think was Rawls at Harvard um Rawls was at Harvard yeah

[00:26:24] yeah and so was Colberg at the time so they must have like buddy-buddyed up so yeah yeah there was probably some this is probably fucking there was definitely fucking there was fucking and a lot of jealousy both on the dog's part

[00:26:36] and on the part of like i don't know who else was there Robert Nozick probably want to get a piece of that too but that's why he did the wilt Chamberlain you know the 50s and 60s were crazy man like a Nozick Colberg Rawls threesome

[00:26:54] like you could just you could go to like a faculty meeting and you just see that and you just walk in on that like with their like pinkies touching and they're giggling like here's i'll give you a means to an end

[00:27:15] all right so dogs like sum up the first segment before we go to uh good evidence that dogs engage in jealous behavior which means that dogs have the ability to experience a complex social emotion um all right all right we'll be back for

[00:27:31] to talk about one of the great movies of all time here yo i feel like we went back to our roots like dog fucking and yeah psychology classic yeah this episode of very bad wizards is brought to you by better help

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[00:35:45] all right well let's talk about ikiru this is a 1952 movie by the Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa this he just came out just two years after he made Roshomon and it's a couple years before the seven samurai so it's kind of mid-career he was 42 years old

[00:36:06] when he made this movie the protagonist is an older man it's not totally clear what his age is I on purpose I looked up the actor's age the actor was approximately 47 years old depending on when when they filmed and so he's definitely playing I think an older man

[00:36:24] because but I could see in his face that he probably was like close to our age which you know just made my death anxiety even stronger but he but seems and certainly acts older yes he does because he has like you know a son that's married and like

[00:36:38] he has gray hair he does a good job of like punching over stokes kind of so he's a bureaucrat he's a section chief of the office of public affairs and right at the very beginning the first shot of the movie is an x-ray of his stomach

[00:36:52] and we learned that he has stomach cancer and then we learned that he has only six months to live roughly he might think 12 but it's probably more like six according to the doctor and we can talk about that scene where they don't tell him he has cancer

[00:37:06] but he knows it right because we found up through a narrator like yeah we find out through well no but in the scene that he finds out that he has cancer only because of the he meets some guy in a waiting room that sort of tells him

[00:37:19] if the doctor says this which is like that you have a mild ulcer and you can eat whatever you want that means you're going to die within a year and so and the doctor just won't tell him the truth which is apparently like

[00:37:30] what doctors would do in Japan at that time according to what I read anyway so anyway he finds out that he has just a limited number of months to live and then he thinks back on his last 25 30 years his very chilly relationship with his son and daughter-in-law

[00:37:46] that he never missed a day at work but that his job was pretty much to ensure that nothing ever got done that you would just send people who had who had needs and complaints to some other department and they would just keep rotating around the various offices

[00:38:01] and so now he's like angry at himself full of regret he feels like that he hasn't really lived at all that he's just been killing time his whole life and he's right so then he kind of wants to punish himself but he also wants to live

[00:38:15] but he has no idea how to do that and he goes on like a couple of different stages it's like a journey it's kind of like an odyssey at this point and he needs a kind of Nietzschean novelist who takes him on the town

[00:38:26] tells him he has to be greedy for life and shows him like the pleasures of nightlife and dancing and drinking and pretty girls but and you know for reasons we can talk about like he can't it doesn't fully work it's not that he doesn't have a good time

[00:38:38] or he doesn't appreciate those things but he can't keep doing that at his age and his condition and also with his kind of mournful temperament all right that if you can't just sing sad songs at the strip club you know yeah which we

[00:38:50] definitely I want to talk about that scene so then he comes across a former worker in his office a young woman named Toyo who just kind of exudes vitality just one of those people who's just alive and he senses that in her maybe for the first time

[00:39:05] like he didn't even he didn't have enough life to even notice that before he's a widower right yeah because he's a widower for many many years and so he starts buying her meals stockings and gifts just to kind of spend time with her which at first is fine

[00:39:19] but then it starts to be very vampire like like or you know like he's trying to suck the life out of her almost explicitly and this makes her deeply uncomfortable and so that this has to end and then finally at that

[00:39:32] right at the kind of low point of that he makes a decision to do one final thing before he dies which is to help a group of women navigate just this impenetrable Japanese bureaucracy to cover a cesspool and their really poor neighborhood

[00:39:46] and then build a park over that for the children there and then once he makes that decision and takes the first step towards accomplishing that the narrative immediately just shifts abruptly to Watanabe's wake after his death and up to this point we've just been following Watanabe

[00:40:02] seen the movie from his perspective but now we learn all about his efforts to get the park built via reports from the co-workers and little snip we get little snip it's a flashback of things that they're describing and then we also learn that he died

[00:40:17] on a swing in the park just after the park's completion and it's one of the most famous and most hauntingly beautiful shots in all of the movie history so that's a brief synopsis Dave I'll start off just with the easy question

[00:40:31] because I know you hadn't seen this movie before what is Kurosawa telling us about what it means to live it's a good question I mean I think that the simple answer is that you get meaning through being productive and finding work that is meaningful in this case

[00:40:53] we're introduced to these women at the very beginning who are really eagerly trying to get this sess pool covered at the very least and they're getting the run around and when Watanabe actually gets the idea that oh I can spend the last six months of my life

[00:41:09] actually getting this done because I know how to navigate this stuff like it you can even see the moment he decides that that he stands up a little taller you know like it's a great performance and so amazing and so so maybe working in the service of others

[00:41:26] is what what is giving life meaning but at the very least working by achieving your potential like he's been a bureaucrat who knows the ins and outs of the bureaucracy and is exactly as you said weirdly tasked with not getting anything done even though he knows

[00:41:43] what it would take to get something done and so so meaning through work meaning through work that helps others yeah like I think both of those things are present in his final act the act that seemed to give him some sort of deep sense

[00:42:00] that he had fulfilled at least one purpose and done something lived in his life but I think like it's not totally clear whether it's just the taking action part of that or the fact that it was for others or some combination of both of those things

[00:42:17] right because the taking action for others sort of as a bureaucrat is what got him excited but it could be that whatever gets you excited to be productive in the last years of your life that's enough like and that that was the project that was available to him

[00:42:32] and that is his job but you know that they had made like at the beginning of the movie it was very clear that all the people who work in this bureaucracy and this is clear during the scenes at the wake

[00:42:45] is that the way to protect your position there is to do nothing and and to closely guard the secret that you're doing nothing like or that like your job is essentially because you know as the as the young woman joyo joyo is that toyo toyo

[00:43:05] you know she tells this joke at the beginning about the bureaucrats like the reason that they keep going to work isn't because they don't take vacation yeah isn't because the stuff won't get done it's because when they leave everybody will realize that they're completely unnecessary

[00:43:22] for what is going down and that that you could tell that sort of like a it was a disrespectful joke to tell in that context everybody's sort of like bowing their heads down but it was totally accurate it was absolutely accurate it comes back yeah

[00:43:36] and like this is what I think is so relatable about the about the movie is I think a lot of people worry that they're in jobs where their purpose really is to make sure that nobody realizes that they're not that necessary right you know and so they

[00:43:55] I think this is like like the characteristic of so many bureaucracies and so many just institutions that a lot of the people there are just struggling to make it seem like they're necessary when they you know they probably aren't their whole professions that exist

[00:44:10] because that's just what people do you know this is a total aside but I've thought about this in the context of education where there's a couple things that have happened when there's been a rise of online education like services that provide online education like even things like Coursera

[00:44:25] you could take Paul Bloom's Coursera course and then we got hit with COVID which meant that we all became online educators so now it really does seem to be the case that like we could have a system where people took the bulk of their early classes

[00:44:43] at least from just an online source you know because we've been we've been trying to value online education this last year so that it makes sense and what we do might be we might be replaceable soon I mean not as podcasters but yeah no that's clearly necessary

[00:45:04] we're essential workers but no I yeah you know it's funny because my initial reaction is I think you know they had they tried to do this online revolution like six or seven or eight years ago and then it just didn't take and then COVID comes

[00:45:21] and I feel like if anything it makes it should it should make people feel even more like no you need the in-person experience but maybe of course I would say that just like the people in the movie can we talk a little bit about

[00:45:35] I don't know how we're going to divide up this conversation but the scenes of the bureaucracy where you know the opening scene where all of those papers are wall behind him all these papers are on his desk and all he's doing is has his official seal

[00:45:53] which I take it means a lot like that that having that seal on a paper is really the most important part of his job and he's just sitting there at his desk you know moving paper seal it you know moving another paper stamp it paper stamp it

[00:46:07] and that that's it and it conveys the emotion of a dreary bureaucratic job I think very well like I don't know if that's what offices actually look like but it's a desperate looking office to me like it's it makes me uncomfortable to see

[00:46:24] well because yeah the piles of people are like kind of tied together tied together pumping out like they're not neatly stacked or anything and they like bury people like they get in the way of people seeing other members of the office like they can be like

[00:46:38] it's like you're buried in all this paperwork and yes like the stamp is important but it seems like it's not until he stamps Torio's resignation letter that we see that it actually does anything significant that it allows anything to happen because you get a really good scene

[00:46:59] right in that opening of the runaround that they give these women about the park they just get sent from office to office oh no that's a park thing oh that's a sewage thing yeah that's a great scene to show the bureaucracy it just gives a sense of like

[00:47:14] just an example of what their job all this like this bureaucracy that's in post-war Japan you know six years after Hiroshima or whatever like this is what it was like if you were actually trying to get something done like it wouldn't happen

[00:47:29] yeah and by the way we do the narrator who only shows up at the beginning and a little bit at the end I think yeah he says that there was a time when he was might have done something worthwhile and he opens his desk

[00:47:42] and you see that in his desk was this like plan for to improve efficiency like from 1932 or something like that it was like you know 20 years ago but it's buried he never actually followed through with it you know yeah which is very tragic

[00:47:57] that's a good a good insight there because that's an important fact about him is that the life just got drained out of him and we don't know exactly when the mother died but it was probably a little bit after that his wife we know a little bit because

[00:48:12] the kid the funeral procession the kid was like what he was pretty young like the his son who is now like in his I'd say late 20s at least right so then so it was like probably right around 20 years ago

[00:48:24] yeah so maybe it could even be tied to the fact that although it seems like everybody else in the office is kind of the same way but in any case both things that could have given his life meaning just sort of left around 20 years ago

[00:48:39] and then the narrator was kind of mean to him he said he'd be boring to describe his life now he's not really living essentially saying he's a zombie right now this is not real life and the only thing that's interesting

[00:48:52] now is when you find out his death sentence like will he now finally live now that he knows he's gonna die and that's the question now I think this was off air but you said you cried during this movie is that in the very like in the end

[00:49:09] in the funeral scenes and in that beautiful swing scene I was like trying to hold back the tears but not doing a good job yeah yeah it's so it's so beautiful so should we go through the different kind of stages of the movie

[00:49:24] yeah so you already talked about the x-ray clinic where he gets diagnosed and the doctor is just the paternalistic assholes of doctors not telling him without that's I guess that must have happened I guess they were like well he's gonna die anyway

[00:49:38] why let him die with this like knowledge that he's gonna die but but what's funny like or what's interesting and perverse about it is also that he seems the doctor seems to know that what Tana B is suspects that what he's telling him

[00:49:52] is that he's really gonna die and still plays the charade through no no no you know like it's almost like he's just trying to avoid telling him yeah you know yeah right right it's like just just to maybe avoid his own discomfort at having to deal with it

[00:50:07] yeah right yeah and then he says and this isn't this is an interesting thing because this movie is constantly challenging I think the audience with a lot of these questions using all different kind of techniques but like the doctor just said like what would you do

[00:50:22] if you knew you only had six months to live almost like as a rhetorical question to the rest of his staff but you know that's a that's a question that rings out to the viewer I think that's something that we're all thinking about you know

[00:50:36] as we watch this you know like the fact that we're also gonna die so what's an oboe he's acting at this point where his he's already hunched over you know he's a defeated man already but once he gets the diagnosis his head starts hanging really low too

[00:50:59] like it's just like he looks like he's always almost about to bow like he's he's just shuffling and he's yeah it's or just fall over or just fall over yeah yeah and no the scene right after the doctors the verdict it all it's just silent

[00:51:18] like there's no sound like and he's just walking on the streets it's just haunting it's like it's like right and it perfectly conveys this holy fucking shit this was something I never even thought about yeah like I thought I was gonna get like some bicarbonate pepto-bismol pepto-bismol

[00:51:36] and now I'm gonna die yeah but like and it's and then and then there's just a heartbreaking little sequence there because then then he goes to the house when it's all dark right yeah yeah yeah and the his son and his wife come home and they're talking

[00:51:55] we don't know where he is and they go into this apartment and they start talking about how he's you know like they're kind of disparaging him and talking about the money and they want a new house they hate these traditional Japanese houses we want a new house

[00:52:10] where we don't have to pull a modern house how do we get the money well dad's retirement pension and his saving yeah they're like counting the you know their dad's money at this point already maybe like collateral we could use it or something like that

[00:52:23] then they turn on the light and he's just in the room and they're very embarrassed about that in a dark corner just like you know super creepy there are a lot of times where the shot of Watanabe is just super creepy on his face

[00:52:38] and his face is so good at being on the one hand a bureaucrat dejected bureaucrat on the other hand kind of a creepy old dude I think it's just a superb performance a bodily performance by yeah it's a bodily and it's funny because you're right about the creepy

[00:52:56] side of him that the peak of it is when he's with Toyo in the final scene with her but like here it's it is creepy of course he's just sitting there in the dark like in their kind of quasi apartment even though it's I think his house but

[00:53:14] but but it's also heartbreaking to just see him there he heard everything he's just got a death sentence yeah and and so he kind of excuses himself to go downstairs do you think he was he was going to tell them yeah yeah yes right

[00:53:31] the first of many times he was going to tell them and and like he goes downstairs and just starts this is so sad like this makes me think about my dad at times when he was alone but he's got he just opens like a shrine

[00:53:44] and starts playing music and there's a shrine to his his ex-wife or his wife that died and he's just sitting there and then the son the son of the daughter in law just kind of seemed like kind of miserable people you know like there's such digs there's like

[00:54:03] you know I've known people who clearly are waiting for their relative to die you know to get money and but the son has like it's like he has these impulses like he knew something was wrong and he almost went to go see the father

[00:54:18] but then he convinced himself and she convinced him that no it was wrong for him to be there and like I shouldn't be concerned about it right and then there's this terribly heartbreaking thing where he's just sitting there by himself listening to music totally distraught and then he

[00:54:33] and then they hear like he hears dad dad dad and so he runs up like a dog like a like a like a dog whose owner is home or something and then all the son is saying is just lock the door make sure you lock the door yeah

[00:54:46] make sure you lock the door and he just in the hallway that little hallway that goes on that scene really did get me that scene got me there's a couple of times we'll find out that like well don't feel just sorry for him right

[00:55:01] like we get flashbacks of the way that he was with his son and one of them were he his son had to go in for an emergency appendix surgery and his son was like stay here with me he's like no I got other shit to do right yeah

[00:55:16] there was a scene I don't know what the baseball scene was supposed to communicate but it might communicate sort of disappointment from his father to his son yeah I was wondering that too and the other one it's are a little more ambiguous right you see that his

[00:55:30] like the son going off to war on the train and he finds them and they and they like touch you know like as he's being like through the crowd and then the son just leaves yeah and then there's the baseball scene where he's very proud of him initially

[00:55:45] and then like he gets caught in a rundown so he's not proud or he's like but is that a pickle is that what we call a pickle a pickle yeah pickle or a rundown yeah see sports yeah you're a a bad guy hardcore sports which

[00:56:00] in this case indicates poor judgment on the part of the sun probably given what the other spectator was saying he shouldn't have got caught in a rundown after he just got a single he went from pride to the opposite of pride for his son in that moment maybe

[00:56:15] disappointment maybe is not cut and dry that that it's that he was a terrible father but you do get enough sense that he can't just blame it on the sun like the sun is behaving the way he is totally for reasons that have to do

[00:56:28] with things in their past justified or not he was not a warm well I don't know like when he goes what I took to be the son going off to war to fight in the war he seems genuinely like you know desperately wanting to

[00:56:44] find him and say goodbye and I don't know if the implication is going to be that he should have pulled him off the plane of the train I mean or but like I don't know what like that seems like what a good loving father would do yeah

[00:56:57] so in my sort of headcanon I took it to be an indication that at least from the perspective of the sun like oh now you love me now that I might die right like now that's when you're showing me all this desire to be with me

[00:57:11] that's that seems that makes sense that's interesting yeah yeah maybe and you know it's very haunting the way he presents these flashbacks because he says Mitsu like which is that his name Mitsu yeah Mitsu Mitsu he he says that in the movie Mitsu as he is going up

[00:57:31] like you know like the happy dog thinking that his son wants to talk to him and then it's that just echoes and echoes and the music is sort of like rhythmic in that way Mitsu Mitsu as you go through all the flashbacks until

[00:57:45] he then just goes and locks the door and it's just like devastating kind of like that I remember I this time I watched it with Eliza and I talked it up so much she asked me if it was a really sad movie and I was like no

[00:57:59] and then we get to this point she says it seems like a really sad yeah because it's it's I don't know if I would call it really sad as a whole but that first yeah the first little bit of it like the first 15 minutes

[00:58:13] or 20 minutes or so is just it's just like yeah just kills you it's just a wrench it really does and you want to say you want to say well fuck your past you know fuck that your dad might not have been there for you like he's there now

[00:58:28] he's dying but they don't know he's dying right and so in some ways I think maybe it connects with the son going off to war resenting that his dad was only showing him attention because he was dying I think he didn't want to get doted on

[00:58:42] merely because he was dying like right you know and I can see why you wouldn't want you wouldn't want that he wanted his son to genuinely you know he be a son to him now not yeah and one of the really sad arcs

[00:58:57] of the movie is of him coming to terms with the fact that that's unsalvageable that that just can't happen and it never does it never does like that's just you know there are things that you can take that are optimistic from the movie but

[00:59:12] rescuing the relationship with the son wasn't one of them it's like the son seems like there is a still a little flicker of fall you know like respect and love for his father but it always gets put out with the easiest little bit of stimulus

[00:59:28] the little bit that I read was talking about sort of like the wave of concern about the decay of traditional families in Japan and sort of you can see that as saying like you know okay here's how a man might be happy

[00:59:42] like you were saying the stages right he's seeking out seeking out material goods sort of sex and debauchery and alcohol and even family in this case like he's seeking out he's seeking out bonding relationships in this family and it just so happens that at this time

[01:00:01] in maybe in Japan or in this particular man's life family life that also does not give him yeah I feel like that that would give me a sense of meaning and purpose like my relationship with my family but it doesn't with him

[01:00:14] so he has to find something else and I think he goes and finds it in in work well so I think he wasn't finding it in anything in anything and I think that like because I was thinking about this you know you the whole idea of

[01:00:28] collectivist cultures in East Asia is that family is so much more important but this is a time where democracy and capitalism now are the sort of reigning ideologies in right post war everything in post war Japan yeah and so there's a kind of individualism that comes with that

[01:00:48] yeah and their their initial conversation about about hating having to live in a traditional Japanese house right and wanting a modern home I think just hits that note right where it's like okay this generation is no longer traditional like they're seeking out right and it's like

[01:01:04] he has the you know the iso the atomism the isolation the lack of real family bonds that are you know like people will say about western cultures and maybe America and specific in particular the kind of individualism the hardcore individualism without the sort of like sense that you're

[01:01:26] working that your work is meaningful so it's really the kind of he's really got nothing it's like providing nothing so this is the first sort of moment where he realizes okay my son's not gonna pull me out of the depths of despair and so he just goes

[01:01:40] plays hooky from work he doesn't he doesn't go to work and then he just kind of ends up in a bar right and we don't know how many days have passed we get the sense it's been a few days like four or five days and he's just been

[01:01:54] kind of wandering around and he's in this bar and he gives this right there's a writer there and then they end up and this is the kind of this is like the next stage this is his the first real Odyssey like he's already realized he's gotten he's

[01:02:10] he knows where he is right now he gets the deal with his son but that's not so now he goes on this Odyssey to try to figure out what it means to live and this is the first step is this novelist who's very kind of Nietzschean

[01:02:21] in the sense that he constantly promoting this idea that you have to be greedy for life you have to live life and he's just so interested in the fact that that Watana how do you pronounce it Watanabe seem to pronounce it Watanabe is

[01:02:37] he's rebelling against his path self and remaking himself yeah and he wants to be a part of that he confessed I think this guy this novelist is the first person he confesses to that he has cancer and the guy that's right he really does he almost takes it

[01:02:50] as like just an interesting thing that he might write about in the future you get the sense that like oh I met a man who has six months of life to live like what a cool story this would make but also that he's moved by him yeah absolutely

[01:03:00] like not just that it's gris you're right yeah exactly yeah and I really think the Nietzschean stuff is pretty explicit at one point he says echo homo which is a Nietzsche book about being gay what it was like to be German and gay in the late 19th century

[01:03:22] but I think like you know this is a kind of like be greedy for life live you know and he takes him and it's actually fairly generous with him in taking him through the nightlife of where whatever the city is yeah I didn't know what city it was

[01:03:38] yeah because he has withdrawn I think at this point 50 000 yen right and so he could pay for it but the novelist is being super generous to give him like a night out to like night on the town on me yeah there's a couple interesting things

[01:03:53] before they go out that's where he gets very explicit about like he's angry at himself he's rebelling against himself he wants to drink to forget that he has cancer and to but also to punish himself for not living so it's like and the and the novel says this

[01:04:10] your cancer has opened your eyes to the fact that you haven't lived yeah and so he's faced with that now I think this is really important that he kind of is now confronting like his eyes are open about the fact that he's wasted his life

[01:04:26] that he's just been marking time yeah he says things that a novelist would say you already said the cancer has opened your eyes I wrote some other ones down he says we only realize how beautiful life is when we face death the worst among us

[01:04:36] know nothing about life until we die it is our human duty to enjoy life he says greed is a virtue especially greed for enjoying life let's go reclaim the night you've wasted and then he tells him I'll be your metastopheles yes uh a fast drive

[01:04:50] and I've never read fast so I don't totally get it but he says I'll be your metastopheles but you don't worry you don't have to give me your soul he's just gonna be the devil he's just gonna like and and it matches with the sort of night

[01:05:02] of debauchery that they engage in where they're just drinking and playing playing games like carnival games I don't know seems like a slot machines like an early proto slot machines kind of the thing that they're doing because they seems like you can win money at it yeah

[01:05:15] yeah and then they go they're dancing they're drinking he is like you know it's it's true that he's not taking his soul I don't think he is just showing this guy a good time and he seems like he's having a good time smiling

[01:05:31] he's laughing at a certain point he gets his hat stolen by a girl and then like buys a new hat which is I think a swankier hat you get the sense yeah that's right and then is very like protective of the hat in some

[01:05:46] you know there's some funny things in this movie and like the stuff with the hat is pretty funny there's yeah they're go to like what I don't know if it's like a burlesque show or an actual like brothel but you know this woman doing like that flapper

[01:06:01] pointy flapper dances to like yeah sort of weird I don't think that's a brothel I think that's just like I don't know like a dance like a place where people go and listen to music and it's yeah there's a lot of drinking and there's probably a lot of

[01:06:15] people that are gonna have sex there that are meeting but like I don't think it says unlike the next place they go I think is an actual strip club but but this is where right that he is it here before the strip club that he sings the song

[01:06:32] yeah yep the pianist who'd been playing this upbeat sort of 20 slapper music asks if there are any requests and he says yes I would like to sing whatever the name of the song is life is brief life is brief

[01:07:21] and so the guy's like all right like I'll play that life is brief fallen love maidens before the crimson bloom fades from your lips this is just the first lines of the song before the tides of passion cool within you and it's it's weird it's one of the

[01:07:38] you know I'd say this movie is not surreal in any way but there are certain moments that are just like because as soon as he starts everybody immediately goes silent kind of and just kind of sits down and it's like they've been struck with by something

[01:07:52] right and it like it never ends like they just have to leave the place he's like killed the buzz yeah he's crying while he's singing it and he sings it well yeah I think so I don't know if I'm a good judge of that

[01:08:05] but why do you think everybody reacted that way at this place when they were so tolerant and even loving of the fact that he was there and chasing after his hat and all of that like everything had been cool with him up up till this moment and then

[01:08:19] I you know I sapping the energy out of a out of a party like that is something that people can do I remember this is in college I remember it was like one of the first few parties that I attended where I was drinking

[01:08:32] and like there was this kind of a douche bag and like we were all having fun and then like he starts talking and he was like man my life has been so hard man like and then he just went into this super emo shit

[01:08:46] and had he been at the center of the party it would have ruined it but like all of us around him were just like yeah yeah your life sucks like and just walked away but I think so I think that's part of it like it's sucking the

[01:08:58] horniness too like there was that was a horny party yeah right and he's sucking the horniness out I also think though that they are doing what they're doing as a way of sort of deny in their own way denying the fact that that death is on the horizon

[01:09:14] yes yeah that's a good point absolutely nobody wants to do with that and almost in like an antique way almost in a sort of unhealthy way are they trying to repress that or keep it out of their minds and this just immediately reminds them that

[01:09:29] you can do all the dancing and have all the sex that you want you're still gonna die and that just kind of like wrecks them that makes penis as soft like that's it yeah and just like yeah and so I think and there's another scene

[01:09:44] later like at the very end of this phase where the they're going home with two women in cabs and he also does a thing where he just gets out of the cab maybe to puke or maybe to we don't exactly know why but when he gets back in

[01:09:59] the mood has changed again and the women say like I don't like feeling blue let's sing and then they just start singing like and they keep singing even when the writer is saying like no this isn't cool now stop and they just keep saying it's like they don't

[01:10:12] such a great shot that captures the difference between the energy of the two girls and the writer who's looking at Watsanabe with this like just face of pity and their their mood is just completely come down because he when somebody says I think the girl says I think

[01:10:30] he's puking and then he realizes that it's because of the stomach cancer and like and he's just looking at him with this pity and the girls are just trying to forget that they're just trying to like yeah they don't want any part of this mood

[01:10:43] and and I think that's also when the writer realizes that this can't save him like debauchery it was good like it's not that it was bad like and he seemed like he was genuinely like you got a little too drunk maybe you know he got too drunk

[01:10:57] and but like the strip when he saw that stripper we only see him we don't see her you know like what he sees but he seems to like almost just ejaculate she was a very pretty stripper for 19 she was a very pretty yeah so like

[01:11:17] it's not that it was it was bad it just it wasn't the thing that he needed to fully live it was like a way for him to forget yeah and and and it's unsustainable like it's it would be an unsustainable strategy for him yes right

[01:11:36] don't you get the sense like like as you get older it just becomes harder to do those things seriously stay out all night and keep drinking and keep getting dragged from place to place and it's like you need you need stimulants you need like

[01:11:50] like I would need an eight ball now the next morning I would just look like what want to not be after his diagnosis just silence in the street as you walk down so when oh yeah then this is when he meets he runs into that girl

[01:12:12] from work right Toya yes and she needs she's decided to quit because she can't stand the fact that nobody does anything there and but she needs his seal to do it and so he takes her to our house and then there's this little kind of comedy of errors

[01:12:27] like this threes company thing or they think the housekeeper and the son and daughter in law think that he's hooking up with this girl right who's a who's a lot younger than him she's like she's like the very young woman in the office this doesn't if there's one

[01:12:42] thing that doesn't fully work for me in the movie it's this like I don't buy that kind of confusion or think that it was necessarily necessary for them to think that yeah yeah you're right to point out to really like point out threes company it is

[01:12:59] it is a plot line where literally a single sentence can clear up any of this understanding so maybe it's just intended to show how bad the channels of communication have gotten you know yeah yeah yeah um but so then now he kind of leaves with her she's very

[01:13:19] she she is somebody who just is uh alive and like it's palpable yeah like life just radiates out of her um not in an all good way like she's a little antics she's a little manic at times and like yeah she she plays almost like the manic pixie

[01:13:38] dream girl role I had that note exactly yeah yeah the the original manny pixie chick you know yeah um but yeah it plays like that like like like Kate Winslet and Eternal Sunshine or something like that like a little bit but like one thing you can't say

[01:13:55] about her is that she's not living she's she is greedy for life just naturally right and she decided within a year and a half that like working in this bureaucracy was gonna kill like was just gonna be terrible and she tells him that and he's like yeah I

[01:14:07] wish I would have realized that a year and a half yeah and and she just intuitively understands that and she's very she's poor yeah um but she just kind of understands that you can't work at that job or it will suck the life out of you

[01:14:23] and so she just does the thing that you should do in that point which is get another job and then he is now just sees that he kind of feels the life rating anything out of her and just starts buying her things like stockings because

[01:14:37] she has torn stockings and meals and just wants to be around her and you see like as she's eating he's just staring at her just trying to get the life that she just naturally without a second thought has right and it's a really interesting sequence

[01:14:55] all of that whole thing you know there is a scene she ends up working it's interesting how she finds me and she ends up working in a factory that makes little toys for kids and yeah and she says every time I make one of these I feel like

[01:15:07] I am playing with a bit one some baby in Japan or something like that you know yeah making friends yeah making friends right and um you're like well that's just a factory job like how much but but she's found meaning in it

[01:15:17] she's found a job that gives her gives her some mean did you see the there's a scene where they're coming out of somewhere and she almost gets hit by the bus yeah yeah yeah okay I want to talk to you about that like was that telling us something

[01:15:32] was that well it's it parallels a scene where he almost gets hit by a car and I'm trying to remember where that was was that before or after I think it's before maybe when he comes out getting the verdict that he's gonna die

[01:15:48] and he almost gets hit by a car and then this is just like that now why you would have that parallel yeah I'm I'm not sure but I think one thing yeah one thing that struck me was how unfazed she was at you know right

[01:16:02] she literally could have died a second ago and it didn't seem to bother her and I think maybe it's just showing her mindset is so far from death like it's not it's not her concern at all so like dealing with this guy who's clear who's dying is

[01:16:16] is not like her mind just isn't there like she's not and it's so far from death not just in terms of she doesn't realize she's gonna die that's not at the forefront of her mind it's all she's so far from death just in terms of how

[01:16:31] she lives too so she's like she's so alive and just gobbling up life that death just seems like it can't happen and like she's yeah like of course she didn't die by that car almost hit him right because she can't die she's just too alive

[01:16:48] and that's just her character and it's and what's interesting is how effortless it is for her and natural and I think that like I don't know I was thinking about this and you're gonna be mad but I did assign this from my class and talked about this

[01:17:02] a little bit so I was definitely doing double the work in my life you know I guess I think it's like Curis Al is just pointing out that by the luck of like the temperament draw some people just have this quality of like

[01:17:16] I'm making the most out of life and just almost by nature and some people have are like Watanabe and it's just it's a lottery like in that sense that's a temperament thing I don't think it's and this kind of tracks with how I see people you know

[01:17:35] like some people are just so full of life and it's not like they made some big decision or had some epiphany or something like that that's just how they are and then there's other people who are you know they're they it's it's a real struggle

[01:17:49] for them to find purpose and meaning and just to I don't know like get something out of living you know and yeah and she I think one of the critical things that she ends up telling him when when she basically is breaking up with him

[01:18:05] and even though they weren't really together or whatever she basically is like I can't hang out with you dude like this it's not I'm not I'm not gonna do it anymore and they go out to eat and he's explaining you know

[01:18:19] I don't remember if this is the part where she's giving all of the nicknames but I think is a scene afterwards where she gives all the nicknames no yeah that's that's in the middle yeah and which is a sweet scene right she says why yeah it really is

[01:18:30] why did you know she's like basically getting out of him why he spent 30 years at this like bureaucratic job and he says you know I did it for my son and if it were me I would be like oh yeah that's yeah we sacrifice for our kids

[01:18:44] I would have just let him have it and she is not letting him have it she points out rightfully like you can't blame it on your son unless your son explicitly told your dad I want you to spend 30 years doing meaningless work right

[01:18:56] I want you to be a mummy yeah exactly I don't know because I was her nickname she had nicknames for everybody in the in the office and his was the mummy because he was like the walking dead and and so like yeah she says

[01:19:09] no you can't blame it on him but I think it's she doesn't say it out of cruelty or even like I don't know callousness or like she just it's like yeah no it's not totally his fault because he didn't ask you to be yeah to be that

[01:19:23] yeah and from the perspective of somebody who is young and has parents who might give her those kinds of guilt trips like he needed to hear that he needed to hear that it was his inactions that contributed to the state of affairs yeah at least so I

[01:19:40] had control I think that's this that's that's not the last scene that they have together that's almost like a good little interlude that they have because I think at the end of the scene that you're talking about when they're talking about his son and then she says again

[01:19:56] in this case wrongly you still adore your son yeah and sort of just her just enthusiasm kind of convinces him that he could rescue the relationship with with her son but then his son but then you know they have this horrible scene where he's about to tell

[01:20:13] the son that he has cancer and then the son just says like just interrupts him by accusing him of having this affair with a young woman how disgusting that's it so then the last scene between the two of them he's literally like in a really creepy way

[01:20:29] trying to he says I I'm greedy for your life teach me how to live like you like teach me how to be like you she is he is doing everything but like biting her on the neck at that point and and he you know

[01:20:45] I think this guy looked a lot younger than he was I think they just did really good job of making him look old and and and he did a really good job of acting creepy there are a number of times throughout the film

[01:20:54] I think as I was saying before that he has this stare that like is just sometimes his face it just looks compassionate and kind and sometimes it just looks like a mouth breather like and in this case we're just like run girl run exactly just a yeah no

[01:21:12] like a like a mouth it's the perfect way of describing it and then and then like sometimes he'll smile and it's like you're so grateful that he's smile you know like oh thank you thank you for giving me that smile yeah so then that's the moment right there

[01:21:29] that you're talking about where she's like kind of totally freaked out and clearly done with him and she says well maybe you could build create something like I do you know I make these bunnies and he says no I can't you know at the office

[01:21:44] I it's just too late for me and then just in a moment and she kind of looks at him kind of thinks yeah probably is too late for you you know like so she's looks like I don't know what to say anymore this is the first time

[01:21:56] she's speechless and then he just has this moment where he says no it's not too late I can still do it I just need to find the will I could I could create so I build something but I just need to find the will

[01:22:09] and then he just leaves her and runs down the stairs at this bar restaurant where they have and this is very cool thing where there's a birthday party happening with all these rich kind of young people and as he's going down they all sing

[01:22:26] and it looks like they're singing to him happy birthday yeah so great and then but it you know like later you find out that the girl was coming up but at that moment it's like they're singing happy birthday because he has been reborn in that moment

[01:22:43] like he is or maybe just born maybe not even reborn right there's just birth but yeah and then and then you see him go to the office and like all right you know like kind of snaps everybody into action who they're just shocked that he's there at all

[01:22:59] and then it's just like all of a sudden you get this abrupt shift and it's the wake and he's dead I remember I looked at the at the how much time was left in and I was like wait there's an hour left in this movie he's dead

[01:23:11] that was like I was I was a little confused but not for long because then I realized maybe we should talk about this now why do you think he makes this narrative shift like which I think is pretty radical for the time to be telling a story

[01:23:25] one way so consistently and then all of a sudden switch like that yeah it must have been radical for the time like it's I just my emotional reaction so I don't know what his intentions were but my emotional reaction to that switch was one where I went from

[01:23:46] just dejected that our protagonist was dead and not knowing whether he got anything done to when they all started talking about him and telling the stories weirdly my energy level and interest in the story went way up and I was measurable it was like from

[01:24:04] one moment to the next all of a sudden I was like oh so what happened yeah okay this guy's gonna tell us and then this guy's gonna tell us and then they're kind of putting together a puzzle because nobody knew that he had stomach cancer

[01:24:15] and they didn't know that that he knew right they like the son certainly said he didn't know he was sick and so you know there's this whole scene where the deputy mayor is at the funeral and all the bureaucrats all the head bureaucrats and the deputy mayor

[01:24:31] gets sort of called out by the reporters who basically this is how we learned that this guy has taken credit for the building of the park when on the streets like word on the streets is that Watanabe was the one who got the park built

[01:24:45] and so he's trying to save face like so he goes through all this saving face stuff that you would do in like a deep honor culture right like you know all of the people around him are like yes yes it was you you know I mean

[01:24:56] Mr. Watanabe did some things but it would be ridiculous to give him all the credit you know they're so obsequious in the way that they're doing yeah exactly while he's there like they they shift you know they shift once he leaves but while he's there it's like yeah

[01:25:12] and you see this is just a a politician that has decided to claim the credit for something that not only he didn't do but that he was a like a significant obstacle to getting exactly and so so when all of the members of the wake they're drinking

[01:25:30] and they're telling each other's stories because the debate they're having is some of them say no I think it's fair to say Watanabe built the park and then other people are saying no like our office did all this work you can't they're almost having just a causal

[01:25:41] responsibility argument yeah right and so as the as they continue telling stories they're not just sort of building by communicating with each other the story is emerging of how this park got built but also they're building his redemption for the for the viewer like they are putting together

[01:26:03] the pieces that led to him finding meaning in life in a way that I think is is just narratively super interesting because they're they're discovering something along the way by talking to each other and that intrigue and curiosity that they're displaying as they tell stories is

[01:26:22] that energy feeds into just the big point of the movie that he found some meaning yeah and I think and just to add to that because I think this is also true and also directly tied to the narrative shift is they're faced with their own now they are

[01:26:40] discovering not only what happened what Watanabe accomplished but they also now are realizing that they're in a similar situation not that they're going to die in six months but as one of them says right like we could all die at any moment and so they're being faced with

[01:26:57] like the the choice and they keep saying like how did he do this what and he must have known he had cancer right like why would you do it and then when they finally kind of decide on well then of course he would build the park yeah because

[01:27:08] if he only had six months to live but then they're like we could all die at any moment and so now they're faced with this with this problem is like existential problem of we all have a death sentence and we could all die at any moment

[01:27:21] and the only difference between him and us is that he knows roughly when it's going to happen so then what do we do what are we going to do what action are we going to do and by this point they're all sloshed I mean they're all

[01:27:34] they're all a mess except for maybe one the one who sort of the one who seems to get the lesson yeah take it to heart yeah and I I really enjoyed the narrative structures so exactly what you said is true because that's that's sort of the

[01:27:47] the emotional tone by the end of that is that they're coming to this realization and that we are too that's what he wants us to like he wants us to face that same problem that yeah but I really enjoyed them like the the narrative structure of

[01:28:02] none of them knowing the whole story and we don't either because we just know he died and them piecing it together because for him to get credit which is something that I'm rooting for right they've built up this tension this in this mini scene here

[01:28:15] in the sub-scene of the movie there's this tension will what to now they get credit and they are the ones deciding it's almost 12 angry men but that they're all doing it together where they're like oh and I was at this and so they tell the story about

[01:28:30] what that and so when they all come together you realize what a gargantuan task he engaged in yeah right and again we have like you said it both gets pieced together for us in terms of the reports that we get but also for them and

[01:28:43] you know there are certain people who are skeptics you know is like it's just coincidence and like he tries to explain it away he tries to dismiss it there's this one guy but everybody so this is after the deputy chief has gone and and took his

[01:28:58] like main cronies and so now it's just the people in the office for the most part who are there along with the women who come to just the neighborhood women who who burn incents burn incense for him which is again like a big thing to tell them

[01:29:14] okay no there's a reason why these women think that he was the one that that did it and just their emotion the fact that they're crying and but they yeah so like but they but as they get drunker they come to the realization that it was all him

[01:29:29] and and he was dying so like the things that he had overcome was like basically facing up to a mob boss right and just giving the mob boss a fate when the mob boss says do you value don't you value your life he just gives them this look

[01:29:44] and that then he's like oh and it's interesting to watch the sun during this because it's like the sun kind of realized oh wow I fucked up and I you know I lost so I lost an opportunity to connect with my dad that and it's my fault

[01:30:02] even though he tells himself that it's the father's fault even then like I think his last lines in the movie are it was cruel for him not to tell us even though he like tried to but he knows he knows at that point and that's just how

[01:30:16] it leaves it with the sun but there's the so then there's we should talk about just this scene because probably the most famous scene in the movie where a policeman comes in and and sort of confesses that he is the last person to see Watanabe alive

[01:30:33] he was swinging in the park which we had known that he died in the park he died in the park yeah but we didn't know the circumstances and so he comes in and he tells everybody he was just swinging and singing that song that same song

[01:30:45] we heard him sing earlier life is brief and just that he seemed so perfectly content that the cop didn't like try to get him to go to some place warm yeah he was it was like I don't remember his words but it was like a

[01:31:00] happiness that I couldn't explain like on his face you know you know very different from the how you would describe him singing that same song in the beginning in tears and dejected right right because at that time he's thinking I never lived and I never will

[01:31:17] and this is a song of like regret and now this is a song of you know it's not like it's above victory right yeah it's it's I you know I did one thing and I did recognize that life was brief and I didn't just miss out on life

[01:31:36] and that's what so and I did a good I did something for this community like you know you you we're gonna see the kids playing in that park and we're gonna see the joy that he brought by getting this done and the shot is so

[01:31:51] just talk about that shot man just the kind of slow pan through the like jungle through the jungle gym he's we get a side shot in the dark in the snow of him singing that song while he's swinging and that's the camera is moving through the

[01:32:06] panning through the jungle gym as we're seeing him sing and it's just beautiful it's just this is where I was like well I'm not even gonna try to stop crying what's the point like at this point and then it switches to kind of a head-on shot

[01:32:23] which is also beautiful and you see his face and you see that exactly like you said it's a very different kind of expression and just a the whole mood of that song even though it's the same exact lyrics and the same you know same singing but like

[01:32:37] it's a totally different song it takes on a different yeah yeah yeah and and that's why this this movie ends up being a happy movie for me like it's he dies but his life that last bit of life was infused with meaning and in a way that

[01:32:55] that makes I don't know it's I don't know if it's full redemption yeah it's redeeming to some extent yeah there is a cynical aspect to the end though so you know like the end of the wake right all the people all the all the coworkers are saying

[01:33:11] I'm gonna do like I've changed I realize now that I have to live for other people and do things and and not just you know get buried in this bureaucracy and then the next day they somebody has a request to I forget what like clean up

[01:33:29] some sewer spill or something and they just give it to the they say oh yeah check with this office you know just like in the beginning of the movie and then one guy stands up kind of like to protest this like what did I thought

[01:33:41] like did we learn nothing? yeah I'll just kind of stare him down and then there's this great shot of that guy sitting back down and then just getting literally like the papers just swamp his face to the point like like like he gets buried in the paperwork

[01:33:56] but then he starts walking little later he walks over a bridge and sees the the park where the kids are playing yeah and and at least I got that that left me with the emotion that not only did he build the park he didn't change the bureaucracy

[01:34:13] but he he changed that guy I think he reached one person and that's that's good enough when it's certainly like at the for where he was at that moment in his life yeah yeah and I think that's like you know I think Chris I was like

[01:34:28] who are we gonna be are we gonna be that guy or are we gonna be the rest of the office workers or the deputy chief or or we're gonna be what ton of be until we find out that we have cancer yeah you know like that's

[01:34:44] it's in that sense I don't know like what do you think the lesson is of the movie the moral for what yeah I don't know so so for one that that that part where they all just go back to normal you know this is something that

[01:34:59] you've heard me mention at least eight times about the Sopranos like which I think is one of the big threats to are just existential health is that like deep important things in life fail to to give any permanent sort of clarity so we're just creatures of habit

[01:35:16] we go right back to doing what we're doing it takes a lot and it took stomach cancer in the case of this guy I don't think Corsal was saying like oh if only we all could realize that that you know we could get everything done we could live

[01:35:32] you should live your life like like what's not they lived his last six months I think it's a much more modest appeal which is just just know we're all going to die like take a step and think about what you want the rest

[01:35:50] of your life to look like you know and yeah and don't get caught in a rut where you are just killing time until you die yeah don't get caught in this kind of psycho where you're not creating you're not doing you're not taking action you're not taking

[01:36:06] real action and you're and and I think and maybe you're not helping others yeah you're making no difference in the world you're making your yeah you're leaving no mark you're leaving nothing like that yeah yeah and I think that just as it's just another layer

[01:36:23] as just a way to deal with one's mortality like he didn't go kicking and screaming at the end you know and that right that is a beautiful way to go like we were talking about in the beginning but the only reason that he could

[01:36:37] was that he was able to look back on like you said even just that last part but to be able to look back on your life and sing a song that was happy you know right right sing a song about the briefness of life but it's not consumed

[01:36:52] in regret yeah something else yeah this really it really reminded me of of just our discussions on this podcast of meaning you know and like meaning doesn't have to be this giant thing that's out there in the universe it is often just local it is what you do

[01:37:08] what you care about what you you know whether you achieve the goals that excite you and that make you happy whether you help others whether you make the world a better place like that's the source of meaning it's not you're not just carried on

[01:37:22] by the wave of life and just like show like I think it is it has this kind of existential quality of like you are creating meaning in your life through action and you know like interestingly not through necessarily connections with personal relationships or something like that

[01:37:39] that's an interesting feature yeah you might yeah you might you might think that the solution to the existential crisis that Kurosawa would gave us would be that he built a deep relationship with the girl for instance yeah like or the women and which maybe or the sun

[01:37:54] that he came came back to the sun he's giving us a very specific you know and maybe it's maybe it's a post war Japan specific kind of message that is given like you can't depend on any of those things yeah like let's rebuild our country

[01:38:09] let's take some pride in our right like our parks and in our right right that's a good point that's a really good point it's like we have to rebuild they're in a they're a society that needs to rebuild and like literal and also like I think metaphorical way

[01:38:24] is just rebuild their identities right and and that that the message might be something that is super specific to the context of post war Japan doesn't mean though that it's not that deeper message right obviously that's great art does that great art this is why this movie

[01:38:41] just kicks ass it's like a great it we didn't really talk about I think we just assumed that that we both thought the movie was great and you know the world thinks the movie's great but having just watched it especially once that second

[01:38:56] part of the movie kicked in I was glued to it at the beginning you know the pacing of old movies is the pacing of old you have to have a certain kind of temperament and patience to get through some of the pacing of older movies

[01:39:09] but once that had been set up and we're hearing the story I'm like and then what and then what you know yeah and then just this enormous emotional release at the end where I was just like I cared I really cared I cared not only about

[01:39:22] him getting that shit done I cared about his community realizing what he had done and his community I wanted that park to be named Watanabe Park more than I wanted anything today like today today my primary want was for that park to be named

[01:39:37] for him to be recognized for his actions and he did he clearly didn't that wasn't the source of meaning for him it was just to get it done you know and I love the end where he's looking over at all the kids playing he's created he's created

[01:39:53] a piece of land that is sustaining families in a way that like his family suffered and like I love that it's sort of like hey families are important you know the mom's calling the kids in for dinner you know it's it's really cute and it's just

[01:40:11] and you get why that's meaningful and it's also an indictment of Japanese society but again this generalizes to the fact that like this was such a unique and special achievement that people had to puzzle about it and kind of work it out like

[01:40:29] like it was some huge mystery how this could possibly happen that they would actually do their jobs they would actually do what their positions say do you think do you think this was hyperbole about the bureaucracy do you think it was that bad I don't know

[01:40:43] like I think there's a lot of the things in the movies that seem a little turned up to 11 like a little heightened there's like some dance hall scene in the debauchery phase where it's so crowded that there's no way something could actually be that crowded it seems like

[01:40:56] there's just no space between any people in this enormous hall and like what city is this also like how many people could possibly be out on something like random like Tuesday night and yeah like you're pointing out like how many how many times would just like

[01:41:10] one old man be able to stop the whole the whole party and sing a song right yeah but I think it probably was pretty fucked up I mean our our bureaucracies are fucked up like the things that we can't get done so who knows it's a big

[01:41:25] Rube Goldberg machine I one of my favorite lines in the movies at the end when they're all resolving that they're going they're talking about how terrible the bureaucracy is what one of them says just to get a garbage can somewhere emptied out you need enough paperwork

[01:41:42] to fill another garbage can right that's a great that's a great line you know so I pair movies like the students in my class have to watch one movie outside of class and we watch one movie in class the movie I paired this with was Groundhog Day oh

[01:41:55] it's a similar kind of thing right like a man needs to it's wasting his life and needs something to make him actually live it well and I think they're they're you know I think they come at it in very different ways but it's about the same kind of

[01:42:10] problems what happens when you realize that you're sucking at living life yeah I love also there was a quote where when the guys are putting together the pieces of like wondering whether he knew he was sick and they're recalling instances that gave it away that they're like

[01:42:26] yeah I think he really didn't know there is a point where he says where Watanabe says in response to somebody I can't afford to hate people I haven't got that kind of time and I thought that was just such a such a great little piece of wisdom that

[01:42:42] especially in like lately Twitter it makes me yeah it makes me think yeah no I think that's like it's it's a beautiful sentiment it takes energy it takes like emotional investment to be angry at people and if you are if you have limited time that's not what you

[01:42:58] placed it on is that worth your time and there's also heartbreaking scenes where they're remembering where he there's one scene where when no one was looking he was just barely able to walk down the hall you know because he was clearly clearly saving his energy

[01:43:12] for all of the tasks that he needed to get done supervising the the construction site and then and then just drained he really you know had this sort of heroic effort at the end there and the women are there to support him yeah

[01:43:28] there's one point where he falls down and like there's a a coworker that doesn't help him up just kind of sits there kind of stunned and then the women immediately run and help him yeah that's a good that's actually a good observation that we see

[01:43:40] a couple of times this community of women you know the ones who are trying to get stuff done and and you don't see men you don't see their husbands you just see this community of women who are there for him and he's there for them and it's

[01:43:54] really the only community that's there for him yeah exactly and you don't get the sense you don't know to what extent it's deep like their connection is it just mutual attitude on their part he's so much that they were balling his funeral right right right exactly

[01:44:09] but you don't like were they talking yeah you know like are they that that's what I don't think we know if they had any kind of regular social bond beyond this deep bond that they were doing stuff for each other I like to think that

[01:44:24] that they would do things like bring and we did see them bring him like something to drink I don't know if it was soup or something like I like to think that they were the secret angels taking care of him throughout all of this you know yeah

[01:44:35] all right let's wrap up live your life listeners don't be like Watanabe don't find out too late that you spent the majority of your life not living I think that the solution Tamler is to send everyone fake doctor's reports that they have some kind of terminal cancer

[01:44:50] you know the world would just be a better place exactly yeah I mean it's an interesting question but again it's like but really does it matter whether it's in a year or 30 years 40 years you know again what I take from it is live your life

[01:45:06] such that you can sing that pretty song that you can sing that song with happiness whatever that means to you live your life that way okay well let's go out on that join us next time on Very Bad Wither

[01:45:51] Hey Very Bad Man I'm a very good man just a very bad wizard