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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The Wonder dramatizes a story set in an isolated community in famine-ravaged 1862 Ireland. British nurse Lib Wright arrives to investigate reports that eleven-year-old Anna has survived four months without eating. Pitting rationalism against unquestioned religious belief, the film illuminates the contrarian, resolute position of a patriarchal panel wielding power versus Wright’s unwavering, methodical analysis.
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Based on the novel by Emma Donoghue — and supposedly inspired by a true story — Sebastián Lelio’s moody, atmospheric The Wonder features a powerful lead performance by Florence Pugh. She stars as Lib Wright, an English nurse brought to the remote Irish countryside in the early 1860s to help determine the truth behind a girl’s claim that manna from heaven — not food — is what has kept her alive for several months.
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Loren King Emma Donoghue’s best known novel “Room” centered on a mother-child bond against a perilous world. Donoghue’s “The Wonder,” set in the 19th century, is also rich with themes of maternal connections and the resiliency of children despite the misguided intentions and outright treacheries of adults.
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The first half of the movie is a slow-burn, but the plot catches fire in the second act when science is pitted against religious beliefs in a contest of grieving mothers. Pugh gives a sober, determined performance as a young widow whose loss of a child in infancy causes her to self-medicate with opium as she tries to save another from self-sacrifice.
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True Things is not a bad film. But that might be the highest praise I can muster. The acting by Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke is solid and convincing, and Harry Wootliff’s direction has a raw naturalism. Yet it’s a film that I found strangely unengaging and devoid of insight.
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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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Articles, books, and films have interrogated the creation of director/co-writer Orson Welles’ iconic 1941 Citizen Kane. Director David Fincher’s Netflix film Mank won’t settle any arguments given its clichéd treatment of Hollywood luminaries, with name dropping replacing complex development. Here’s the essence of this take on the troubled attribution of Kane’s screenplay.
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Are you curious about how Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane got made? The movie industry loves its own past, so director David Fincher (The Social Network) wants to set the record straight, working from a witty, character-study backstory by his late father, Jack Fincher.
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