Hal Kitchen
I think it’s only fair that I should preface this expression of my response to Living with an admission of bias. Unlike many, as I understand, I have seen Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru and moreover, it happens to be one of my favorite films of all time and quite frankly, I cannot think of a single film that would benefit less from being remade. However, when I first heard such an undertaking was in the offing, my initial reaction, though skeptical, was not outright exasperated. After all, Bill Nighy is as fine an actor as you’ll find and his twinkly persona could’ve been perfect for both a severe middle manager and an impassioned bon vivant. It would be totally different to Takeshi Shimura’s unforgettable performance and give the film its own identity while staying true to the spirit of the original. With Kazuo Ishiguro writing the script, this could be something really poignant, humorous and satirical, taking the original and turning it on its side to create something fresh and rewarding.
Little did I know then that even that cautious optimism was giving the filmmakers far too much credit and that ‘fresh’ and ‘rewarding’ are the absolute last words I’d associate with this insipid, vacuous and soulless recycling of one of cinema’s greatest ever accomplishments. Remind me to be more cynical in future and never give any prospective remake the benefit of doubt again. I don’t think I’ve seen a single film all year that I enjoyed less or in whose favor I could say less, than Living.
Like Ikiru, Living follows an aging pencil pusher who receives a terminal diagnosis from his doctor, triggering a sudden realization that he’s been wasting the gift of life all these years and has only a few months left to make count.
Kazuo Ishiguru, who surely cashed the easiest cheque of his career adapting this—basically by search replacing all the Japanese cultural signifiers with British ones and abridging the story down by 50 minutes of runtime (and in the process somehow creating a film that’s far more boring)—makes few alterations to the story beyond cutting and presenting events in a much more artless and blunt manner, resulting in a film that’s all but a shot for shot remake. The most significant change is that our hero’s own role in the narrative is reduced with us instead seeing it intermittently through the eyes of a new member of his workforce, who takes over from the original’s narrator. This itself is an expansion on the epic structural choice of Ikiru, where the third act switches perspectives and we see Kanji as he appeared to them, his life becoming a teaching moment for each minor character he encounters. Living doubles down on this and often feels more like a mash-up between Ikiru and Bartleby. This is about the only significant change to the story and it’s not a rewarding one as it results in a story where we’re further removed from the most important character, with whom we’re already spending less time due to the condensed runtime. It’s a much more conventional approach to the story and conventional is the word for much of this.
Director Oliver Hermanus’s attempts to ape the style of Kurosawa, mimicking specific shots and even briefly incorporating wipes do nothing but irritatingly remind the viewer of the better film they could be watching and abjectly fail to create the same sense of internal meaning. In Ikiru, the shot in the angled mirror above the bar creates an impressionist moment aligning us with Kanji’s drunken state, here Hermanus’s camera is so stiff and prettified that it serves no such purpose. The way the score cajoles the viewer into feeling something by overegging every scene in an attempt to make up for the dumbed down dialogue that has no feeling to it whatsoever becomes really frustrating, especially when the film has the gall to end on the same Vaughn Williams piece that last year’s film Benediction also ended on to such devastating effect. This film really hasn’t an original idea in its head.
Perhaps at least we might have hoped that Bill Nighy’s (already hotly Oscar-tipped) performance would be the film’s saving grace, but far from it. This is a dismal performance and probably the worst I’ve ever seen from Nighy. Granted he had an insanely tough act to follow, Takeshi Shimura’s portrayal of Kanji is one of my favorite pieces of acting of all time, but his characterization of Williams as a stiff, emotionless piece of cardboard is an abject failure. I had hardly expected one iota of the heartbreaking desperation and fragility of Shimura but how do you make a Bill Nighy performance this humorless?
No, I’m sorry to say that this was everything I feared and less and quite honestly one of the worst films I’ve seen in years. If you liked it, and I gather many did, I will say only this: please, please go watch Ikiru and don’t dare try and tell me I’m wrong about this film being insipid if you haven’t. Absolutely every single moment in this film was done ten times better by the original. It’s worse written, worse shot, worse acted, worse structured, worse paced and worth-less, confirming every single one of my worst fears and the only positive thing I can say about my experience with it is it reinforced my perception of Ikiru as an untouchable masterpiece and one of the few truly perfect pieces of art in existence.
