LIVING

Director: Oliver Hermanus

2022, UK, 102min., PG-13

Screenwriter: Kazuo Ishiguro, based on Akira Kurosawa’s film, Ikiru

Cast: Bill Nighy, Tom Burke, Aimee Lou Wood

 

Novelist and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go) is among the many devotees of the masterful films by Akira Kurosawa, from Ran to Rashomon. In a heartfelt tribute, Ishiguro has written an (Academy Award-nominated) screenplay based on Kurosawa’s 1952 classic Ikiru. The brilliant adaptation stars Bill Nighy, the British veteran of over 80 (!) films including Love Actually, Pirates of the Caribbean and Notes on a Scandal. Called “Mr. Zombie” by his co-workers, Nighy plays a faceless 1950s bureaucrat toiling in his office, until he is shocked out of his torpor by a sudden, terminal illness. Searching to discover his true self and meaning in what is left of his life, he plunges into its dangerous, magnificent chaos for the first time. “a rare remake that only augments and enriches the original. For Bill Nighy, it feels in every sense like the role of a lifetime.” – John Nugent, Empire Magazine.