Female Film Critics 24/375
A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s highly acclaimed To Live, Living is equally powerful, thanks to Bill Nighy’s quietly dignified performance and a beautiful script by Nobel Prize winner, Kazuo Ishiguro. Nighy plays Mr. Williams, a very average British civil servant in postwar London, whose first name we never even get to know because no one is close enough to him to refer to him personally.
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Director Oliver Hermanus and writer Kazuo Ishiguro have that rare mix of hubris, knowledge of film history, and love of subject that have led to adapting the screenplay of writer/director Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru. Bill Nighy’s performance and the evocative cinematography that captures mid-century London make Living a film that will have its own staying power and great value in repeat viewing. Shame on any critic that points to Ikiru in denying the richness of Living. Note to Hermanus and Ishiguro: Kurosawa would be proud.
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Imagine being forced to defend “apartheid,” your country’s policy of discrimination of blacks. Imagine being a young man inculcated into an army of hatred, where trainers start with cruelty and descend to sadism. Now, add homophobia to those aspects of life in South Africa in 1981. The three ingredients define this fine film. Moffie is derogatory Afrikaans for “effeminate” in the bully jargon of the times. It’s what Nicholas has been called all his adolescence. When he is forced to train for two years for the South African army, he tries desperately to be what others define as masculine, that is, unyielding, mean, craven, unloving.
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