A small slip at home sets off the biggest question of one man's life.
In Tolstoy's famous story, a powerful judge's fatal decline begins with a simple household chore. What was he hanging when he fell?
Curtains Ivan Ilyich hurt his side in the fall, shrugged it off, and slowly realized the pain would never go away.
Surrounded by a family who pretends he's just a little sick, who does the dying judge find comfort in?
His young servant Gerasim, a peasant boy, was the only one honest enough to admit Ivan was dying, and kind enough to care for him anyway.
The judge insists he doesn't deserve his suffering because he followed every rule. What does he slowly start to doubt?
Whether he lived well Ivan had spent his life climbing the social ladder, and Tolstoy called that life most simple, most ordinary, and therefore most terrible.
In the final moments, a mysterious force strikes him and he sees a bright light. Where does his hand fall?
On his son's head Instead of hating his family, Ivan suddenly pities them, and his terror of death melts away.
Which legendary Japanese filmmaker turned this Russian story about dying into a movie?
Akira Kurosawa Kurosawa's film Ikiru was one of many adaptations, and the story still inspires new films and even an opera today.
