They say that, in the golden days of Hollywood, he was not satisfied with the certainty that almost everything he tackled turned into gold, but also aspired to absolute prestige, convinced that his cinema would obtain irresistible
glamor
if among his list of scriptwriters included the most illustrious writers.
In other words, that producers who were not particularly distinguished for their culture, but for their commercial nose, could throw away the roll that they had hired indisputable literary peaks such as William Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald.
Of the first we will never know what he contributed to films in which his name appeared in the credits (little or nothing, as the Coen brothers imagined or testified in
Barton Fink
, since the glorious Faulkner was permanently drunk and close to
delirium tremens
) and as for the intelligent and lyrical Fitzgerald, he had the opportunity to narrate his disastrous Hollywood experience in a self-parody and delicious book entitled
The Pat Hobby Stories
.
From the Anglo-Japanese Kazuo Ishiguro, blessed by the Nobel Prize six years ago, I have only read the remarkable
What Remains of the Day
, that sad story of an unconsummated love in the English countryside between the butler and the housekeeper of an aristocratic family.
Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson were memorable in the bleak yet also romantic film directed by James Ivory.
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The most distinguished promotion of
Living
is not done by director Oliver Hermanus (which doesn't ring a bell to me), but something as rare as a Nobel laureate signing the script.
Although he does not adapt one of his novels to the cinema either.
He is limited to making a
remake
of a film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa titled
Live
.
I seem to remember that he bored me quite a bit, nothing to do with other films by this man that have moved me, like the beautiful
Dersu Uzala
.
Living
was largely spent in a wake.
Here, Kazuo Ishiguro transfers the setting to England in the fifties.
It is carried out by a group of officials who work in the same office.
Seemingly conventional people and unmistakably
british
.
They meet in the morning on a train to go to work.
In it they speak just enough, they smile when they have to smile, everything is greyish and cold.
Except for a young woman who has started working there and who represents a breath of life.
The boss is a hieratic type, devoted to social forms and work efficiency, with a placid existence that has always been governed by the predictable.
That gentleman, about to retire, will experience a definitive catharsis when he finds out that his death is near.
And he will act before her doing things that he never imagined: establishing communication and friendship with the outgoing young woman, devising a plan from her managerial position so that the children of the neighborhood can enjoy something that the administrative bureaucracy had made impossible.
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This plot, in which nothing great or particularly emotional happens, is well developed.
Lightness has a point of charm.
But what I like best is Bill Nighy's sober and soulful performance.
He was that lonely, elegant and long-suffering old man from
The Bookstore
, that guy beaten by life, who only finds comfort and refuge by reading tirelessly, for whom discovering Bradbury and Nabokov is a miracle.
In love with no illusions with that bookstore that vileness will end up expelling from town.
Nighy is sober.
He conveys the most with the least.
Living room
Directed by:
Oliver Hermanus
Cast:
Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Tom Burke, Alex Sharp, Adrian Rawlins
Genre:
drama.
United Kingdom, 2022.
Duration:
102 minutes.
Premiere:
January 4.
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