Living

Akira Kurosawa’s IKIRU(1952) told the story of a terminally ill bureaucrat deciding how to live out his final days in the chaos of post-war Japan. Oliver Hermanus’ striking remake retains this same time period but transposes the film to London. Although the film remains faithful to the story and its structural ingenuity, the shift to Britain alters many of the dynamics in intriguing fashion. While Kurosawa’s Japan conveyed a sense of rebuilding a national identity, Hermanus’ London is suffocated by the status quo. Mr Williams is also markedly older than Ikiru’s Mr Watanabe, meaning his diagnosis resounds differently. Rather than provoking a rapid scramble to find some meaning to his existence, it proves a well needed tonic instead, with his final years otherwise having been whittled away into nothingness.
In LIVING, Hermanus celebrates life in all its splendor, bringing the keen eye from his earlier works BEAUTY and MOFFIE to find beauty in grand government buildings and reflections in the puddles that fill up bomb craters. The screenplay by novelist and Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro takes an equally exquisite approach, creating a film that is a stunning reminder of the power of legacy. (Leila Latif)

Oliver Hermanus: SHIRLEY ADAMS (2009), SKOONHEID (2011), THE ENDLESS RIVER (2015), MOFFIE (2019)