Toshiro Mifune plays an aging foundry-owner at war with his family in this drama touching on post-war nuclear fears. Kiichi Nakajima (Mifune) is the patriarch of a large family, including a number of illegitimate children alongside three children with his wife. Worried about the prospect of a nuclear strike and the radioactive fallout, he has decided to sell-off the profitable foundry, the family business, to buy a farm in South America. This follows a previous attempt to build an underground bunker which cost them a great deal of money. The children take their father to family-court to have him ruled unfit to make this decision. Among the panel of judges is dentist Harada (Takashi Shimura) who has some sympathy with the elderly Nakajima’s concerns.
“I Live in Fear” deals with one of the gravest themes of the mid-twentieth century: the threat of nuclear war and the subsequent dangers of radioation. Toshiro Mifune gives an incredible performance, one which the entire film revolves around, as a man who is genuinely worried for his childrens’ futures and feels that he must do what he can to protect them. The supporting cast play off Mifune as the contradictory forces to his passionate beliefs. When we are first introduced to them it seems a simple case wherein the elderly Kiichi is suffering paranoid delusions and his more level-headed family are attempting to calm him, or at least prevent him making any rash decisions. However, as the plot moves forward we realise that they are motivated by self-interest, and are perhaps deluding themselves to an equal degree in their nonchalant attitude to nuclear war. Kurosawa’s direction and the masterful script by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, along with the incredibly cinematography by Asakazu Nakai and a score by Fumio Hayasaka, come together to create a powerful film that is full of incredible moments, capturing the family dynamics that play out as a microcosm of wider debates around the issue.
While focussing on an individual family, the film speaks to all people who share Kiichi’s concerns, and those who ignore them. A grand-scale scene at the end of the film, in which the foundry has burnt down and the characters move about the wreckage while startled passersby look on, recalls the devastation of war-time bombings, making clear to people that this is not some fantastical nightmare of the protagonist but something that can and may again happen. The film is a stern rebuke to those whose self-interest and material concerns blind them to the greater dangers faced by society. The beautifully framed final scene at the end of the movie hints at the crossroads between heaven and hell that humanity finds itself at. We hold the power to destroy all life on earth, but also the ability to look beyond terrestrial concerns and consider the future of our species. A startling film with an engaging central dialogue that is exceptionally acted.
