«Bad faith», «past» and «death». A reading based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy

Abstract

The cinematographic work of Akira Kurosawa has been analyzed from certain categories of that vast literary and philosophical movement that has been called «existentialism». The finitude, the anxiety, the absurd, the authenticity, the decision –typical «existentialist» motives–, run through much of his filmography. On this regard, the film Ikiru [To Live, 1952] is perhaps one of his most eloquent productions. Inspired by Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, Kurosawa’s work is set in the last months of the life of Kanji Watanabe, Head of the Tokyo Citizens’ Section, a minor office of a complex state bureaucracy that the film portrays as inoperative. His life changes at the root when he realizes that he has stomach cancer and has only one year to live. The film will show Watanabe’s various attempts to find meaning to his life. The purpose of this article is to offer an interpretation of the film based on some concepts included in L être et le néant [Being and Nothingness, 1943], Jean-Paul Sartre’s fundamental philosophical work. I wwill focus on the characteristic Sartrean notion of «bad faith», the relationship between the For-Itself and the «past», and the analysis of «death», in controversy with Martin Heidegger.