Ikiru
Middle-aged Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) has been a sedate, bureaucratic civil servant for 30 years. His wife has died; his son and daughter-in-law, who live with him, are hardly interested in him. Just before retirement, he is told he has stomach cancer and will live another year at most. As death approaches, he realises that his life has been meaningless. In the time remaining, he still tries to put a meaningful spin on his existence. A chance encounter with one of his former subordinates, a woman who has found a nice new job, inspires him to devote himself henceforth only to things that really matter.
That Akira Kurosawa could do more that making samurai films, he proved with this nuanced and moving character study of a man in search of meaning, who has chosen beauty, joy and love in life just in time. In 2002, Steven Spielberg announced he would make a remake of the film, starring Tom Hanks, but that film did not materialise.
