Living: A Movie Review
When you watch a movie in el cine, it can morph subtly before your eyes, surround your senses, capture your interest, and pull you in when you don’t expect it.
Living is not a great movie, but it offers a great movie-viewing experience.
For the first half hour I was thinking critically. I found myself wearing a critic’s hat, obscuring the view of the row behind me while mentally preparing a rant. It’s hokey, I thought. It’s not cinematic. It feels like television, the acting is wooden, the sets aren’t very good, the script is stuffy, the mood is dreary. It’s unknowingly conformist in its characterisations, across the board. And it feels a lot more pro-establishment than the source film, Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952).
The original delivers a sharp critique of bureaucracy, the complacent machinery of state, and its unrealised potential to help the lower classes. This one carries the same message, but with a softer tone that is kinder to the state, bureaucracy, and those who run it. I am not a fan of bureaucracy, and sensing this softening of message dismayed me.
At some point, though, I settled into my seat, took off my critic’s hat, and placed it by my feet. The row behind me applauded, their view now clear (for those who have not seen one, critic’s hats are elaborate, oversized accoutrements that measure at least 20 centimetres in…
