Will to Live 1999

On a somber trek to Mount Kamuriki, Rentaro Mikuni as Yasukichi confronts a painful piece of cultural memory—the ubasute legend, a cruel tradition in which aging parents were left to die by their children on a remote mountain. The journey anchors the film in a fragile space between myth and lived experience, as Yasukichi grapples with aging, responsibility, and the fragility of family bonds. The narrative threads between present-day events and a paired, book-embedded story about a seventy-year-old widow named Okoma who prepares to follow that same path, its tale presented in stark black-and-white interludes that echo memory and folklore, creating a dialog between personal history and collective myth.

Back in the present, Yasukichi visits a bar run by a woman he once had an affair with after his wife’s death. A humiliating incident—he defecates in his clothes and is thrown out—leaves him lying on the pavement. A bicycle rider glides by, and when he stops, he realizes the rider is a doctor who takes him to the hospital. The doctor, Akira Emoto, becomes the conduit for what follows: he calls Yasukichi’s eldest daughter, Shinobu Otake as Tokuko, who lives with her father and is initially reluctant to bring him home.

Tokuko reveals she is grappling with bipolar disorder, yet she ultimately agrees to care for him again. At the hospital, Yasukichi has the stolen book about ubasute, and he begins reading it aloud to Tokuko, bridging the generations as the text’s story interrupts the present. The book narrates the tale of Okoma, the 70-year-old widow, and her preparations to be taken to Mount Kamuriki by her eldest son; this child’s-eye recounting appears in interspersed black-and-white sequences, giving the film a mirrored rhythm of memory and myth.

Tokuko’s sister arrives to collect unused furniture, a practical intrusion into the intimate crisis unfolding at home. Yasukichi experiences repeated hospitalizations after episodes of incontinence and fainting, incidents that underscore his fragility and the erosion of daily routines. During one stay, a visit from his son reveals that the boy is getting married, but tells his father his presence at the ceremony isn’t required, a quiet erasure that deepens the sense of estrangement.

Ultimately, guided by the doctor’s medical advice and Tokuko’s urging, Yasukichi agrees to be admitted to a retirement home. Time passes, and Tokuko, feeling the ache of guilt for leaving her father to face old age alone, returns to him. In a poignant, almost ritual gesture, she carries him on her back, echoing the young carriers who once lifted their elders toward Mount Kamuriki, reconstituting the bond between generations rather than ending it. The film leaves viewers with a measured meditation on care, memory, and the weight of familial obligation.