Director Oliver Hermanus has made a very British and extremely respectful remake of a genuine cinema classic, Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru", and it manages to work. The 1952 original showed Kurosawa's fluency in reflecting the human condition in a compelling manner outside the settings of his more famous samurai epics. This 2022 film takes a more austere, "The Remains of the Day"-like approach to the same story of a dying bureaucrat's transformation into a selfless soul in his last days. It's no surprise Kazuo Ishiguro adapted the screenplay although I was surprised how faithful he was to the original down to very specific scenes and images. The key difference was the differing acting styles. Whereas Kurosawa directed his actors in an almost more Baroque style, Hermanus relied on a more repressive approach which seems a better match with the 1953 London setting. Bill Nighy gives a touching performance truly comparable to Takashi Shimura's in the original. Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, and especially Aimee Lou Wood perform admirably in the expected supporting roles. If the film was not as transcendent as it could have been without the shadow cast by Kurosawa, its intention and craftsmanship did a lot to compensate.
