Director: Oliver Hermanus (Uk, Japan, Sweden). Year of Release: 2022
1953. A sepia-tinged London, full of red buses and black cabs. Men walk down the streets in black suits, ties and bowler hats. We cut to a station platform in the suburbs. One man it a suit and bowler hat is stood on his own. He is beckoned over by some similarly dressed men. It is Peter’s first day working for the LCC (what some of us remember as the GLC), most of whose workers seem to be men who live in the same suburban village.
The men board the same railway carriage and have the featureless conversation only possible among workmates. At one station they see their boss Williams on the platform. Peter remembers that at his interview Williams seemed like a decent chap, but that’s about as far as his memories go. Williams boards the train, but of course he doesn’t join his subordinates in their carriage. When they all get off at Waterloo, they vaguely acknowledge each other as they get off the train.
Peter’s job consists of paper pushing. He sits in an office of 5 men and one woman. Every so often someone appears at the door with a docket, usually saying that a different department of the LCC has disclaimed responsibility. The sole job of Peter’s department (and every other one) is to either pass on the docket to a different department, or to stuff it in an in-tray where it will never be looked at again. Peter’s co-worker Margaret tells him that the key to success is a towering in-tray.
Margaret is untypical in the department in more than one way. She’s a woman for a start. Secondly, her aspirations extend beyond this deadbeat job – she’s about to have an interview at Lyon’s Tea Shop for a job which could make her a manageress. And thirdly, she seems to have some character, and is someone you might want to spend some time talking to, even if you were stuck with her in a stultifying railway carriage.
Williams discovers that he has cancer, something that he feels that he cannot disclose to his family or his subordinates at work. So, he goes first on an amusement park and pub bender in Brighton (? maybe: all South coast resorts look the same to me). Then, he bumps into Margaret, near to her new job at Lyons, where it looks like her “semi-managerial job” is a glorified waitressing job where she rushes about at the beck and call of dissatisfied customers.
Looked at with any sense of objectivity, Williams’ behaviour towards Margaret is somewhat creepy given their age difference. He takes her to posh restaurants, where she lets him order her ice cream desserts. Later he doesn’t let her get her bus home and implores her to stay with him for one last drink. I think the official message that the film is trying to tell us is that this is a lonely man trying to regain his youth, but there is an unhealthy power relationship here of a rich man buying the time of a younger woman.
The film’s implication is that Williams has been stuck in his routine managerial job and life, and needs someone like Margaret to loosen him up. Margaret indiscreetly tells him the nicknames she has come up with for everyone at work – including him, Mr. Zombie. But what does this say about Margaret, whose role is little more than being working class and authentic so that the more strait laced cast members can feel good about themselves?
Apparently Living is based by Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa. I can’t remember whether I’ve seen Ikuru, but if I did it was decades ago, so I can’t really compare. One thing is obviously not the same – many of the signifiers are quite different, and an ageing man tryng to perform one single act of kindness does not have the same meaning in Kurosawa’s Japan as in 1950s Britain. In contrast to Kurosawa’s radicalism, Living is most definitely an inoffensive film. This fact may please or dismay you.
The script is written by Kazuo Ishiguro, probably still most famous in film circles for having written The Remains of the Day, a film about which I am still ambivalent. While I did find Anthony Hopkins great as the butler who is unable to express his feelings, and I loved the understated subplot as it slowly became evident that his titled bosses were Nazi sympathisers, the film never strayed far from or challenged its location above and below stairs of the mansions of the landed gentry.
For me, Living contains all of the drawbacks of The Remains of the Day and few of its benefits. My favourite films show the change which is latent in society. Living shows little to no potential for change. Things get done when men in bowler hats behave honourably. The bowler hatted men may occasionally show some personal change – swap their bowler hat for a trilby, maybe – but they stay dressed immaculately in their dark suits and do little to disrupt the general order of things.
Of course, Living stars Bill Nighy, who is always watchable, even if this is far from his best film. For a start, it’s difficult to avoid the fact that this is a film about middle management doing nothing. Which means that for all the film’s aspirations towards having something profound to say about the human condition, all it is really saying is that sometimes middle class people aren’t as exciting as they think they are. Well, some of us knew that already.
Despite all of this, some people have loved Living – occasionally calling it the anti-Marvel film. I get this, sort of. But I really think that Film should be a more ambitious medium than one which offers us a binary choice between mindless special effects on one side, and a staid endorsement of the status quo on the other. It is possible for films to say interesting things. Unfortunately, and despite the decent acting, I didn’t get this sense of excitement from Living.
CinePhil 