'Living’ is a worthy reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s drama—and one that features, courtesy of star Bill Nighy, as superb a performance as you’re likely to see in 2022. Read beastobsessed's review:
When we first spy Mr. Williams , it’s through the window of a commuter train taking well-dressed businessmen—all of them in similar pin-striped suits and bowler hats, clutching slender briefcases—to 1953 London for their daily toil. With a stern, fixed countenance, equally severe body language, and a low, gravelly voice that speaks in clipped cadences, Williams’ appearance indicates that he’s a stuffy man with whom one does not trifle.
Wakeling’s first day on the job is depressingly instructive, thanks to an assignment to aid three women on their quest to get approval for their petition for a children’s playground. The foursome’s journey around the building is a case study in bureaucratic circuitousness and pass-the-buck stasis, with no one willing to assume responsibility and everything ending up precisely where it began. In such a system, progress is deliberately thwarted by indifference.
Williams is, for all intents and purposes, dead inside, and thus he can only wryly smile when he’s informed by Harris that her pet nickname for him is “Mr. Zombie.” Harris makes this disclosure only after Williams’ mundane existence begins to rupture, first with his decision to skip work—and take out his life savings—and visit the beach, where he meets a writer named Sutherland who takes him on a nocturnal tour of warm drinking establishments and carnivalesque burlesque shows.
Hermanus’s direction places an emphasis on constricting framing and diagonal lines . In tandem with Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s mournful and moving 1950s-style orchestral score, his visuals contribute to a weighty, oppressive air that’s echoed by Nighy’s burdened-by-grief visage.
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