8 stars

dir: Oliver Hermanus

2022

Living, in case you ever needed to know, is actually a remake of an Akira Kurosawa flick called Ikiru, which at the time was translated as “To Live”. It was based on a Tolstoy novella called The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which is nothing like either of the films referred to.

And yet why did I refer to it? Because. I can be a pretentious fuck sometimes.

But none of that matters now. They brought on board that supreme cataloguer of British classism, emotional repression and regret, being Kazuo Ishiguro, to update the story from 1950s Japan to 1960s London. And instead of a dying Japanese bureaucrat realising how pointless his life has been, we have Bill Nighy playing a bureaucrat who lives to make sure nothing ever gets done or ever progresses, until he has very little life left.

I sound off and mansplain crap all the time, and think I know about a bunch of things. I know very little, I’ll grant you. There are so many things that I am so ignorant of.

But I can tell you one thing for free, one thing that is absolutely true, one thing that makes me very much appreciate both of these films keenly, in a way most people would barely ever approach.

I assure you, dear reader, I know plenty about bureaucracy.

The life of a bureaucrat, a cursed thing, to be sure, is only a stand in for these authors, screenwriters and filmmakers, for people who have squandered their lives. None of these people really know what it’s like to be a bureaucrat. They know what it’s like to be the victim of bureaucracies, but not the dark art of the other side of things.

To really grasp the supreme pointlessness of these people depicted, honestly, as good as these flicks are at showing the abject soullessness, the malicious pleasure derived from thwarting the hopes and dreams of others, well, they still barely scrape the surface to reveal the horrifying void beneath.

dir: Lila Neugebauer

2022

A movie about a depressed Afghan War veteran and a depressed mechanic being a little less depressed when they’re hanging out together? You’d be fighting other audience members to get into the cinema.

This flick could not be more low-key if it tried. It could not be more low-key if it drank a herbal tea with three Ambien while taking a bath. I don’t mean it’s sleepy, I mean just that this flick isn’t big on histrionics or people yelling stuff or changing their facial expressions much.

It’s appropriate to the story being told. It’s low-key, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t stakes. I mean, there aren’t any, but it doesn’t feel aimless.

The curious reality about people who go to war, and get wounded, and come back “home” is that dying in war is seen as a mercy, and that surviving brings with it its own dangers. The terrible statistics about suicide amongst veterans at least to me indicate that surviving a war is only the first step in many, in terms of staying alive.

Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence), at film’s beginning, is pretty wrecked after surviving an explosion. Even though outwardly she has healed, she suffered a traumatic brain injury which means she walks with difficulty, balance being the issue, but also has difficulty with her arms and hands, with all motor function skills. There’s pain, there’s confusion, there’s the shame of needing help, there’s also the loss of inhibition. When she first meets her patient, saintly carer / nurse (the great Jayne Houdyshell), and hears as to why she got into this line of work, she says to her without thinking “That sounds like a miserable life.”

She thinks, without questioning it, or thinking about the social niceties, that looking after people like her, wounded people like her, would be hell on earth.

It takes a few seconds after she says it, where she looks quietly stunned at what she’s just said, to realise that one shouldn’t tell their carers such things upon first meeting. You should wait a few days at least before you entirely devalue all their life choices.

(Ο Άνθρωπος του Θεού)

dir: Yelena Popovic

2021

It’s…strange. My path to tracking down and watching this flick is an odd one. A few weeks ago I watched a Greek film called Apples about a world where people get amnesia spontaneously but still have to get on with their lives, which wasn’t that world-shaking, but had a guy in the central role who was a bit interesting.

And then I saw that he had another film that came out in 2021, and thought that I would give that a go.

It’s actually (mostly, 99 per cent) in English, despite the setting and the nationality of most of the actors. It’s about a Greek Orthodox saint, which I can’t imagine a lot of people who don’t already speak Greek could possibly care about. And it’s set in the 1890s which, I dunno, is it a decade that has a lot of diehard fans? I mean, I know the kids of today are strangely and offputtingly fixated on the 1990s, which I find very disconcerting, especially because I was there, and remember what we did back then, but I struggle to imagine the audience that could exist for something about a religious weirdo from over a century ago.

So, well. Films don’t have to have built-in audiences for my purposes, because I’m not an investor, or a hedge fund manager, or in fact anyone with enough money to invest in icy poles. I care if I enjoy a film or not, and then I think about why afterwards.

There is something compelling about the character study provided here (rather than the biopic aspects). Arvis Servetalis, as Nectarios of Aegina, gives a very committed performance as the saint, played as a man who so completely believes what he preaches that the other members of the Greek Orthodox Church (literally referred to as the Patriarchy, I’m not making that up) fear and resent him. Because he’s not into his faith solely for the accumulation of wealth, and actually wants to help people, however high he rises, he inspires hatred in the other priests because they fear he’ll give the Church’s wealth away to those who really need it.

The film starts off in Alexandria, Egypt, with there being a guy, a priest, well, actually more like the equivalent of a bishop (a metropolite, as he is referred to in the movie), who is beloved by everyone who he comes into contact with, absolutely everyone except, you guessed it, the other priests and metropolites, especially. These men with flowing beards and awesome headgear sit around plotting against him. The main reason is that they fear that, because Nectarios is so awesome, and because so many people adore him, that he’d be a shoo-in to be the next Patriarch of Alexandria.

What is a Patriarch? He’s not just an old guy, or someone’s daddy, or a paid up member of a misogynistic system striving every day to make the world a worse place for girls and women everywhere. He’s like a pope to those who follow the Orthodox faith. The conniving priests dread the idea of Nectarios becoming Patriarch and potentially giving away all their wealth. All their clothing with gold thread in it, which surely was Jesus’s plan all along.

dir: Mimi Cave

2022

This film from last year called Fresh is not to be confused with the great film directed by Boaz Yakin in the 1990s called Fresh about a 12-year-old chess playing prodigy and drug dealer just trying to get by in the world.

No, this has less cross-cultural social commentary, and more of a contemporary “what’s up with dating in this app driven day and age, huh?” feel to it.

The first exact 33 minutes of this flick are one kind of film. It’s the purest form of rom com. A young woman called Noa, for some reason (Daisy Edgar-Jones), sickened by and disappointed as well by the men she meets through dating apps, has a chance encounter with a chap in the fresh food section of a supermarket. He’s a bit awkward and self-effacing, but kinda charming and doesn’t give off any creep vibes. She is taking a chance, she knows, but she finds it refreshing to connect with someone without the bullshit artificiality or outright lies of online dating.

She wants, like everyone wants, to skip that early part which goes on and on until the other person reveals themselves to be a complete jerk. Either show you’re a jerk upfront so she can bail, or be a decent person and maybe they can get to know each other?

Steve (Sebastian Stan) doesn’t trigger any red flags yet, but hey, that’s a red flag in and of itself, isn’t it? Doesn’t it just show that he’s crafted his game to the point where women don’t question his motives or wonder why he doesn’t seem to exist online? I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. Maybe he just wants to opt out of the online madness / rat race that seems to depress so many people.

And he seems to be a handsome doctor you say? Reconstructive surgery you say?

Wow, and with that disarming smile and massive head of healthy hair?

No wonder Noa says “fuck it”, and decides to trust her gut, and go with what feels right.