Its not very often I crawl from the cave in search of natural light and human civilisation, but when I do, theres nothing I enjoy more than a trip to the local Cineplex. Now and again, as I watch, hypnotised, at the revolutionary use of both sound and images, something happens to my cold, dead heart: I feel a twinge of sympathy at a characters misfortune. I think its because the Gods of fate treat some characters so roughly. In fact, so doomed to failure are these unfortunate individuals that I felt compelled to compile a list of twenty of them and publish it on a list-publishing website. Of course, this list is in no way exhaustive, for the average screenwriters cruelty knows no bounds. Oh, and loads of spoilers all over the place.
20. Kenji Watanabe - Ikiru
We begin our journey of generally bad luck with Ikiru, a film set in Kurosawas Tokyo of the 50s, where bureaucrat Kenji Watanabe is surrounded by daily tedium and meaningless, in which the concerns of citizens are brushed off to other departments as much as possible. His wife is dead and his kids care more about inheriting his money than they do about his well-being. At the beginning of the film Watanabe learns he has stomach cancer and has less than a year to live. So not only is his life tedious, meaningless, and loveless: there isnt much time to turn it into anything more positive. By anyones standards, Watanabe is not blessed with good fortune. But then, this is what makes Ikiru such a beautiful film, and such an enduring classic: it becomes a quietly moving story of Watanabes quest to create something beautiful and meaningful and worthwhile before he dies. So there. Its not all bad. Well it sort of is.