WHAT MAKES GREAT ART GREAT?: DISSECTING IKIRU AND OUR TOWN

by Steven Goldsmith MD

What Makes Great Art Great?: Dissecting Ikiru and Our Town

by Steven Goldsmith MD

Two recent experiences inspired me to forego my usual medicine-bashing rants: the filmed 1989 Lincoln Center stage production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru. Both deeply moved me—in Our Town’s case, into a blubbering mess, as I always am after Emily’s monologue in the third act—but why? After all, both narratives dealt with mundane lives of unremarkable people, in many respects interchangeable with countless others. Nothing of more than ordinary interest ever happened in their lives. Nevertheless, I sensed I was watching great works of art. But why? What makes a great work of art? The fact that they moved me provides a clue.

In Ikiru, Kanji Watanabe, a middle-aged widower, languishes as a government bureaucrat, his sole function being to stamp with an official seal endless documents with no more interest than if he were swatting flies. His son and daughter-in-law care nothing for him, only for his estate, and he has no meaningful relationships. In short, his life has the meaning of a clod of dirt. By the time he learns he has stomach cancer with months to live, he has already died, with only a coffin to certify his inevitable demise.

He discloses his illness only to Toyo, a young woman in his organization whose company he seeks because her joie d’vivre lifts his spirits. When he inquires about the key to her happiness, she shows him the cheap wind-up toy she makes for children, triggering his epiphany. Before his death he bulldozes the bureaucratic inertia and red tape of his associates and forces into existence a much-needed neighborhood playground. At the end of the film, children romping there serve as living memorials that Kanji Watanabe once lived.

In addition to its trenchant commentary on bureaucracies and Japanese society, Ikiru conveys a message both existentialist and spiritual: the meaning of life is found outside of the self, in dedicating your actions to something bigger than yourself, especially if it involves doing for others.

In some respects, because it examines (albeit lovingly) the minutiae of daily life, Our Town seems to observe life through the opposite end of a telescope from Ikiru. And yet through these details—a character chows down bacon at breakfast, another prizes sunflowers in her garden, a younger brother’s appendix bursts on a camping trip to North Conway; Shorty Hawkins flags the 5:45 train to Boston —we glimpse the spectrum of human existence, with its family life, burgeoning love, marriage, childbirth, death. Through the potpourri of details we glimpse the universal.

Like Ikiru, Our Town seems to be about death. But they are even more about life, how the inevitability of death creates, or should create, meaning in life and challenges us to live our lives well. Ikiru shows us that devoting ourselves to something bigger and taking action redeems an otherwise empty existence. Our Town implores us to be present in order to savor daily minutiae as they parade past us; in doing that, we can appreciate the majesty of our world, the universal. As the deceased Emily Gibbs says upon visiting Grover’s Corners as a ghost, “Oh, Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.” Indeed, Thornton Wilder recognized that this appreciation may be a gift that only people who have passed to the other side can understand, after they have lived their lives. (As the philosopher Hegel stated, ”The owl of Minerva spreads it wings only with the falling of dusk.”) Good writers understand this phenomenon: the way to evoke universal truths is by depicting the minute details that comprise our quotidian existence. It is through details that the universal reveals itself.

Both creations illustrate the attribute possessed by all great art: it evokes within us experiences that transcend our customary frames of reference, that which is greater than us—universal truths, beauty connecting us with the sublime, epiphanies that link ourselves with the rest of humanity, nature, or God. You may find these attributes as well in Bernini’s sculpture of David, a Rembrandt painting, a Beethoven symphony.

What about merely good art? While we can appreciate its craftsmanship and creativity, it does not transport us beyond itself and beyond ourselves the way great art can. Good art can please us, thrill us, make us laugh or weep, satisfy us emotionally the way an expertly prepared and presented meal can satisfy our taste buds and stomachs. But it does not connect us with the universal or transcendent. For example, as a film noir addict I love Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, and The Asphalt Jungle. I admire their dialogue, characters, and cinematography, and leave them thoroughly entertained. But they are not great art. They are self-contained in meaning and in resonance; self-referential. They just make me feel good, the artistic equivalent of a perfectly cooked sirloin and a glass of vintage Cabernet.

Finally, as a psychotherapist I credit Ikiru and Our Town with two lessons for all of us and especially for those struggling with despair, anxiety, and other psychological afflictions: 1) dedicate time and energy to an endeavor bigger than yourself, especially if it involves helping people or working for the common good; 2) stay present and attentive to the here-and-now minutiae of your existence, for they distract from destructive rumination about the past or future while connecting us in unexpected ways with ourselves and the world in which we are all sojourning. The same principle that characterizes great art distinguishes a great life.

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Be well.