Exquisitely directed by Oliver Hermanus from a script by Kazuo Ishiguro, this English-language remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Ikiru' finds fresh depths in a classic.
), “Ikiru” remains sufficiently revered that the mere thought of a remake might draw cries of sacrilege. But it is also, like so many of Kurosawa’s films, a culturally permeable, infinitely adaptable story. Its lessons about the finity of existence and the beauty of living for the good of others are nothing if not universally applicable, something that could also be said of its withering indictment of government bureaucracy.
The building is a well-ordered monument to inefficiency, where papers are duly stored and shuffled around, and anyone in need of personal assistance is immediately referred to the next department over. The satire of public administration is much the same as it was in “Ikiru,” down to the series of wipes used here to follow a group of women on their fruitless, frustrating quest to convert a bomb site into a children’s playground.
That makes for a trimmer narrative , if also one that, for those who’ve seen “Ikiru,” might feel a touch muffled and overly circumscribed as it sends Mr. Williams off in search of existential answers. Away he goes from the office where he has never missed a day’s work until now, with nary a word to his colleagues or to his unsuspecting, self-absorbed son and daughter-in-law .
That might make the movie sound more anemic than it plays, as if it were a story about the meaning of life with barely enough life surging through its own veins. But if “Living” never matches — or tries to match — the grit and density of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, it knows that detachment can be deceptive, that it can conceal profound and resonant depths of feeling.
Their economy comes to fruition in the third act of “Living,” which shrewdly restructures the story’s closing scenes with no loss of impact, and with an assertion of its own singular identity. That’s to the good of a movie that knows Mr. Williams’ example is somehow both admirable and inimitable, that the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary one can only be measured within a set of specific, unrepeatable circumstances.
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