Living (12A)
Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's on-screen reputation is built on dissections of British stoicism, such as the adaptations of his novels Remains of The Day and Never Let Me Go.
This time he’s the adaptor, scripting a remake of Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru, about a non-descript bureaucrat trying to give meaning to his existence after being given six months to live. The result is Brief Encounter as a cancer weepie.
It starts with a piece of misdirection. After the opening credits have placed us in early 50s London, we see a young man (Sharp) in a bowler hat at a suburban train station on his first day in a new job, joining the other bowler hats who will be his colleagues.
I assumed the film would then jump forward four decades to reveal this man as Nighy, all youthful vigour gone, replaced by that haunted forbidding visage. In fact, Nighy appears soon after on that same train playing the cold, distant boss, Mr Williams, a man nearing retirement after a long, humdrum life in the office.
Having established that we’re staying in 1953, the film really goes to town on its evocation of repressed, emotionally stifled post-war Britain. South African director Hermanus (Moffie) does a lovely job of bringing the period to life. The planning department where Nighy works is a bureaucratic labyrinth the equal of Gilliam’s Brazil.
But the film is all about Nighy's career-defining performance.Tall and lean, with his hat pulled low, staring squint-eyed into the sun, he strides through the mild streets of London like a home counties Clint Eastwood. The early scenes where he is coming to terms with what an empty shell he has become are haunting and heartbreaking, but not as much as the later ones where even after this realisation he still can’t find a way to connect with life.
Ishiguro’s adaptation sticks closely to the original while managing to chop 40 minutes off the running time. The film only falters in its last third when the character finds some purpose in his existence. Its attempt to replicate the famous finale of the original, the main character sitting in the snow on the swing of the playground he’s devoted his last days to building, is a bit too fussy and doesn’t resonate. A shame because the rest of the film is a very fine achievement.
Directed by Oliver Hermanus. Starring Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Adrian Rawlins, Hubert Burton and Tom Burke. In cinemas. Running time: 102 mins.
***
Part of the power of horror films is that they address the terrifying uncertainty of life. Five months ago the latest film from the director of the Oscar-winning The Artist was basking in the spotlight of being the opening film at the Cannes Film Festival.
Now it’s bypassing cinema and being released straight to streaming platforms. This seems harsh, but more than most remakes, there is a certainty redundancy to his faithful retreading of the Japanese cult hit One Cut Of The Dead. It is the zombie movie recast as a backstage farce, in the manner of Noises Off.
The first half hour, all done in a single continuous take, is a film crew making a zombie flick who find themselves in the middle of an actual zombie assault. The film then retreats to go back over the crew’s preparation for the arduous task of doing the shot.
The setting of the original, a disused power station, was more atmospheric than the deserted office block employed here but, having not really got on with the Japanese version, overall I prefered this. The actors are better, especially Duris as the manic director, and the humour comes across more clearly.
Directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Starring Romain Duris, Bérénice Bejo, Gregory Gadebois, Finnegan Oldfield and Mathilda Lutz. In French with subtitles. Released on digital platforms November 7. Running time: 110 mins.
***
Well, at least it’s not Kwarteng. For his first film as director, Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae takes us back to the early 80s, when South Korea was suffering under a particularly brutal dictator.
The film plants some true events into a fevered spy drama about the heads of two opposing intelligence agencies (Lee and Jung) both searching for a mole that’s leaking intel to North Korea and each desperate to pin it on the other.
Hunt is like a John Le Carre novel remade as Heat. You’re never really sure who is who or what is what, but every ten minutes there is a massive shootout or punch up so there’s no time to feel lost.
It’s overblown and bordering on preposterous but delivered with a relentless Christopher Nolan-style energy that whisks you along. It confronts the horrors of Korea’s past, but its exaggerated vision of the country at the time as a crazed hotbed of violence and paranoia that was riddled with North Korean spies is perhaps inadvertently supporting the US case that only a strong man could rule the country at that time.
Directed by Lee Jung-jae Starring Lee Jung-jae, Jung Woo-sung, Heo Sung-tae, Go Yoon-jung, Jeon Hye-jin and Kim Jong-soo. Korean with subtitles. In cinemas or download. Running time: 125 mins.
See http://www.halfmanhalfcritic.com/ for more reviews.
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