"Living". Phoenix Picturehouse

This review was written for Daily Information, and appears on their website.

Western filmmakers have for decades plundered the works of Akira Kurosawa for new ideas. Most famously Seven Samurai provided the template for The Magnificent Seven, and when Sergio Leone brazenly plagiarised Yojimbo for the first of his Dollars trilogy he ended up in court. Even Star Wars feels the force of Kurosawa, taking inspiration from The Hidden Fortress with its tale of a battling princess aided by two droid-like comedy lackeys.

So it’s a relief to see that Living openly declares itself to be ‘based on’ Kurosawa’s Ikiru (‘To Live’).

However, even that statement falls somewhat short of full disclosure, because Living is not just based on the Japanese original. It’s a translation of it – and a clever one too.

Ikiru is possibly Kurosawa’s most powerful film. It’s not an epic, and it’s not a period piece about Samurai warriors. It’s set in the time and place where it was made (1952, Japan), and it’s a humble Kammerspiel about a local government bureaucrat. It’s both satirical and deeply humane. It’s also pretty accessible to a mainstream Western audience, but some cultural hurdles lurk within, not least the Japanese medical tradition of concealing from cancer patients the truth about their condition.

Living literally translates Ikiru to the London of 1953, and along the way gently smoothes away all those cultural differences to create a moving and wrinkle-free period piece. The central character’s relationship with his son and daughter-in-law, the niceties of 1950s office politics, the public scandal of an older man going to a café with a younger woman – all of these have been skilfully adjusted to make easy sense to a British audience weaned more on Mary Poppins than Rashomon.

But along the way, something has been lost. Kurosawa’s original has a burning and contemporary purpose fuelling its drama. The neighbourhood women’s desperation to navigate local bureaucracy and create a children’s playground out of a bomb crater reflects Japan’s post-war efforts at reconstruction and coping with a new democracy. The central character’s gradual realisation that his public responsibility is more important than family or company ties is, in the context of 1950s Japan, no less than a call for cultural and political upheaval. It’s a demand for ‘Westernization’ in the way that Kurosawa’s entire ouevre represented a shift towards Western methods. When you watch Ikiru, even if you’re unaware of the context, you can feel the pulse of emotion.

Living has no chance of matching that passion. It lacks the contemporary relevance. Instead, it focuses on the moving, human story of Mr Williams (Bill Nighy in one of his very best performances), who shakes off the shackles of local government in a dying effort to bring a little good to the world. Director Oliver Hermanus has clearly decided to eschew contemporary meaning by locating the story in the exact year of Ikiru. So where the original had clean, white hospital walls and jazz-ridden nightclubs, the new version settles comfortably into what we used to call the Merchant-Ivory world of steam trains, bowler hats, and lunch at the Savoy. Undoubtedly this makes Living a pleasant and immersive watch. But is it letting us off too easily? Are there not genuine problems of corporate responsibility, governmental incompetence and personal wellbeing today that need to be addressed? Bizarrely, Ikiru feels more relevant to these issues, with its sense of immediacy, than Living does with its sense of nostalgia.

One problem I have always had with Ikiru is the late sequence in which Mr Watanabe’s colleagues argue about his legacy. In the original film this debate seems to go on forever. Hermanus shortens it and breaks it up into different scenes, which is an undoubted improvement.

But the final word must go to Bill Nighy. The dignity, strength, and self-effacing determination in his performance turn this film from a pale imitation to a full-colour one. It’s not Ikiru. Probably nothing ever could be. But it’s the best translation of it I’ve ever seen.