{"id":22499,"date":"2023-02-21T00:56:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-21T00:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/living-reminds-us-what-it-means-to-live\/"},"modified":"2023-02-21T00:56:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T00:56:07","slug":"living-reminds-us-what-it-means-to-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/living-reminds-us-what-it-means-to-live\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLiving\u201d reminds us what it means to live"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Adaptations have been the bread and butter of the cinematic world for some time now. Whether it be from hit game series to a hit TV series via Last of Us or a legendary play in the hands of a filmic master a la <a href=\"https:\/\/www.art-critique.com\/en\/2022\/01\/the-tragedy-of-macbeth-is-a-brooding-masterpiece\/\" target=\"_blank\">Joel Coen\u2019s Macbeth adaptation<\/a>, it\u2019s an overly familiar saturation of the market. And while at times this can feel like a ping pong of the same ideas across mediums, sometimes a story\u2019s shape is so timeless and significant that it feels poignant in any instance\u2014and such is the case with Living.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Living (2022), directed by Oliver Hermanus and written by Kazuo Ishiguro, is an adaptation of iconic Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa\u2019s 1953 drama Ikiru (\u201cto live\u201d). In turn, Ikiru was semi-inspired by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy\u2019s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. What all of these works share are an aged and comfortably well-to-do aging bureaucrat facing mortality and a shift in perspective for how he has lived. One can easily see how well such a story sat in 19th-century Russian literature as well as early Japanese cinema, and Living places us in the equally appropriate setting of 1953 London following the end of Mr. Williams\u2019 life.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Sony Classics.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Performed heartbreakingly subtly by Bill Nighy, Mr. Williams discovers he has terminal cancer and less than a year to live. While at first struggling with suicidal plans, \u201cliving a little\u201d, and communicating this news to anyone in his life, Williams\u2019 journey is one of stepping outside the cycle he has set his life in. Inspired by the vivacity and kindness of former employee Miss Harris, filled with life by Aimee Lou Wood, Williams chooses to spend what\u2019s left of his life bringing some small good to the world\u2014completing the Sisyphean task of pushing forth a group\u2019s request for a children\u2019s playground through bureaucratic channels.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Living feels both on its surface and in the structure of its presentation to fulfil the role of an early 20th-century melodrama. From its trappings of the comedically recursive bureaucracy shown in the stunning County Hall to its battle with the stiff upper lip, it\u2019s easy to see the story as a bit dated. But Hermanus executes a perfect level of introspection in his direction that pokes holes in a monolithic wall of stoicism that is timelessly relevant. Humanity is pressing forth against that barrier every second.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Aimee Lou Wood as Miss Harris; courtesy of Sony Classics.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The visual approach of the film further places it beyond the traditional roots of its story. With cinematography by Jamie D. Ramsay, there are moments of beautiful symmetry found that maintain the terse feeling of 1953 London, and in equal measure, there are evocative framings and spacings that drive the feelings of shifting paradigms and emergent fear in Mr. Williams\u2019 dreaded sentence. Throughout a bender early on, led by the incredibly impactful (and unfortunately a bit underused) Tom Burke as insomniac erotica writer Mr. Sutherland, we see side-by-side the jubilation and coziness of swinging bars and burlesques and the stark dread that falls across these hedonistic scenes and Burke\u2019s face\u2014it\u2019s a visual dichotomy with a lasting impression.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Ripe with a secret garden of compassion and realistic trials and tribulations, Living slowly brings us through the alleys, streets, and cold walls of London to find something deeply alive amidst the stone. As a parable of rekindling humanity in our easily jaded and numbed minds, this understated drama puts to us the simplest and most important question possible: how do we want to live our lives?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adaptations have been the bread and butter of the cinematic world for some time now. Whether it be from hit game series to a hit TV series via Last of Us or a legendary play in the hands of a filmic master a la Joel Coen\u2019s Macbeth adaptation, it\u2019s an overly familiar saturation of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call-for-artists"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u201cLiving\u201d reminds us what it means to live - United Arts Agency | UAA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/living-reminds-us-what-it-means-to-live\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cLiving\u201d reminds us what it means to live - United Arts Agency | UAA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Adaptations have been the bread and butter of the cinematic world for some time now. 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