Living

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

In this film, the question is: what to do when we have little time left to live. The answer comes straight and to the point, and it is a profound reflection. The highlight is Bill Nighy's performance.

This is a very faithful and moving adaptation of the film Ikiru (by Akira Kurosawa). It perfectly translates to a period English setting because paralyzing bureaucracies are endemic to both cultures. Bill Nighy turns in one of the greatest performances of his career as a wage man who awakens, perhaps too late, from the false promise **** career.

This is a remake of Ikiru by Kurosawa Akira. Living is shorter than Ikiru. Ikiru may be too long. It was not easy to transfer from Tokyo to London. Some of the important scenes in Ikiru were omitted in Living. The actors were good. Ishiguro's screenplay was well-done. Overall, it was a well-done remake.

(Mauro Lanari) From what I remember of "Ikiru", seen too many years ago, the film strength lies in the power of a story without frills. The remake of Hermanus is instead mannerist, already the choice not to transpose it into the contemporary age by treating it as a perod drama affects its existential value, sunk even more by a glossy, lacquered, invasive photograph. It saves itself in the third act when returns to the now dead protagonist on the wave of bluntly unadorned memories and reactions.