BEFORE: The January plan is almost over, it worked out better than I thought, in that I was able to add every film I wanted to add, without getting in the way of work days, and the sequel film "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is still not streaming at an affordable price, so I won't have to add it later this week, which is great because I don't have any room for it. It will be added to the watchlist later, I'm sure. Now I really will have to start working on the documentary cast lists so I can have the right order set up for June or July or whenever it makes sense to start it.
Tom Burke carries over from "Cleanskin". I've had today's film on the list for probably three years, it just never seems the right time to get to it. It's not impossible to link to, but I don't think a real opportunity arose in all that time - well, waiting for two other Bill Nighy films (that aren't horror films or romances) to come around doesn't seem to be working, so let's clear it off the list a different way.
This one got a Best Actor nomination for Bill Nighy, which is why I took notice of it in the first place, which reminds me that the nominations for 2025 were announced the other day, so I checked them out today. A lot of snubs, which means a lot of films suddenly WON'T be having guild screenings any more - this could explain why my calendar is fairly clear, there was a time to book "FYC" screenings, and for most films, that time has come and gone. It's like the SAME 5 or 6 films got all the nominations this year, and once again, I haven't seen most of what's been nominated, with one exception. "Sinners" got the most noms, and I dropped that in to my horror chain last year at the last minute - so if I can't program "One Battle After Another" in March before the Oscars - and I really can't, because my romance chain is programmed to reach St. Patrick's Day - I guess I'm going all in on "Sinners".
THE PLOT: In 1950's London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off from work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis.
AFTER: This film also premiered at Sundance, on January 21, 2022 - just a bit over 4 years ago. I've heard this is the last year for Sundance in Utah, then next year it's moving to Colorado. I visited Sundance in Park City 3 times, back in 1998, 2001 and 2004 - considering my recent career choices and my age, it's possible that I won't make it back there again. I have a co-worker now who goes out there and does crowd control and check-in, I have not made any attempts to join her there partially because of my age (working festivals is kind for the young) and also the extreme cold. But I remember those visits when I would get up at 5 am and take the bus down to the box office so I could get early same-day tickets, buy as many as I could, take them back to a ski cabin full of crew members and sell my extras, keeping the best ones for myself. Those were the days - but I also remember the freezing cold, and while it's cold in NYC right now, it's not Sundance cold, also I'm inside, and I don't have to work this week except for tomorrow night.
So let's say it's been on my list for three years, give or take, that's not TOO bad, I've got films that have been on the list for much longer. The films that have been on my list the longest are some TCM staples like "Grand Illusion", "No Time for Sergeants" and the 1941 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", who knows, maybe I'll never get to these. But for modern films that have been on my list the longest, therefore the true un-linkable films, there's "Zombie Honeymoon", "The Red Turtle", the two sequels to "Cube" and the 2016 re-make of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Well, never say never I guess, because I did get to "The Butterfly Effect 2" last year, also "I Lost My Body" and "Apollo 18", and I'd pretty much written those films off, too. "Norma Rae", "Stroker Ace" and "Gotti" were once thought to be un-linkables, too, and it just took adding more films to change that.
The future's always in motion, that's my point - but what if it wasn't? "Living" is a film about a man who's given six months to live, though his doctor says with some luck he might make eight. OK, that's the bad news. If there's any good news, it's the effect that this has on his life, or what remains of it. When the end is in sight, when you have more road behind you than ahead, it can change the way you think about things. Suddenly spending all of his days inside of an office seems like kind of a waste of time - it's not how he really wants to spend his last six months, as a bureaucrat on the London County Council. Especially when so many of the projects that his office works on tend to just float around from department to department, and almost nothing ever gets accomplished. You can kind of see the inspiration for Terry Gilliams' "Brazil" here, where everyone is literally drowning in paperwork, delays are an inevitable part of the process and if any department should make a mistake, it's either covered up or intentionally never acknowledged as such.
After receiving his diagnosis, Rodney Williams attempts to tell his son and daughter-in-law that he has terminal cancer, only his attempts are unsuccessful, he can't seem to broach the subject, with what I know about British personalities, this kind of tracks, it's easier to NOT tell them and deal with the consequences of that later. But since he'll be dead, that means he won't have to deal with those consequences at all. What he does instead is withdraw half of his life savings, purchase a lethal dose of sleeping pills and head off to a seaside resort town with the intent of committing suicide. I can't really tell if his logic here is to make things easier for himself or for everyone else - but of course he's not really thinking things through, he's just reacting to the bad news.
When he meets Sutherland, an insomniac writer in a cafe, he offers up the sleeping medicine to someone who clearly could use it, and in return, Sutherland takes him out for a night on the town. Drinks, singing, and striptease, sounds like a lovely time, and Rodney has actual FUN for the first time in, well, as long as he can remember. He comes across as someone who just maybe forgot HOW to have fun, and work and life can do that to you. He returns to London with a new hat and a new outlook on life, so he does NOT go straight back to the office, instead he runs into Miss Harris, a young woman who used to work for him, but left to take a position at a chain restaurant. He invites her to lunch at a high-end restaurant, and they have a lovely conversation - he meets with her several times, but it's not exactly romantic, she just reminds him what it's like to be young and he envies her outlook on life.
He soon realizes that it's not too late to do something positive, so he pushes for the construction of a children's playground, a proposal to redevelop a World War II bomb site into something more useful to the community. Normally this is the type of thing that would be lost in the shuffle, or sent around from department to department, but Williams decides to fast-track it through all of the approval stages, and shepherd it through each level of approval personally, so that, you know, something actually gets DONE for once. Meanwhile, Miss Harris starts dating Williams' new protege, Wakeling, and they're seen going on long walks and sitting in the park together, because it's 1953 and that's what people did back then.
No spoilers here, but the example set by Williams here sparks his colleagues to also become advocates for positive change, however before long they're slipping back into their old habits and letting projects languish in levels of bureaucracy, often because it's just easier that way. True change takes time, we get that, even small changes in a modern city take inordinate amounts of time, and when I think about NYC today, there are then also levels of corruption, people taking advantage of the system, and people being resistant to change that tend to slow things down. They've been trying for years to stop subway fare evasion, for example, and nothing seems to work, partially because government officials are incompetent and partially because citizens are both entitled and inventive, and keep finding new ways to beat the system. So, we keep finding ourselves back in the same place, where there's a problem that nobody seems to know how to solve. They could put humans back in control of selling fare-cards or monitoring turnstile entry, but those humans need to get paid, so any savings from eliminating fare-jumping would be negated by the additional salaries for guards preventing the theft of city services.
Williams leaves a letter for Wakeling, urging him to remember the playground whenever he gets discouraged, the one time that something got done in short order and within budget, I guess. It's good advice, when you look back on your career, remember the good days, the well-attended screenings or the busy Comic-Cons and not the bad days, when your film didn't get an Oscar nomination or the studio had to move because the landlord locked the doors when the rent didn't get paid. I'm trying, I really am, but late at night I still get those stress dreams - going through old photos helps, because I only took photos on the good days, it turns out.
I know this is set in the 1950's, but I couldn't help think of the Beatles when somebody asks Williams how me manages to not lose his temper when dealing with the unhelpful council members, he simply says he doesn't have time to get angry. Essentially it's the same as saying "Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting." Those lyrics from "We Can Work It Out" might turn out to be the most important ones that Lennon & McCartney ever wrote. Well, those along with "All You Need Is Love". Maybe this is what "There's nothing you can do that can't be done" refers to.
Directed by Oliver Hermanus
Also starring Bill Nighy (last seen in "The First Omen"), Aimee Lou Wood (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Alex Sharp (last seen in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"), Adrian Rawlins (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Hubert Burton (last seen in "Their Finest"), Oliver Chris (last seen in "Dolittle"), Michael Cochrane (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Anant Varman, Zoe Boyle, Lia Williams, Jessica Flood, Jamie Wilkes (last seen in "Fair Play"), Richard Cunningham (last seen in "45 Years"), John Mackay (last seen in "Cruella"), Ffion Jolly, Celeste Dodwell (last seen in "Allied"), Jonathan Keeble (last heard in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Patsy Ferran (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Barney Fishwick, Eunice Roberts, Mark James, Nichola McAuliffe, Laurie Denman, Gleanne Purcell-Brown, Violeta Vlaverde, Michael James, Rosie Sansom, Matilda Ziegler (last seen in "The Rhythm Section"), Grant Gillespie (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Nicky Goldie, Thomas Coombes.
RATING: 6 out of 10 "skyscrapers" of paperwork
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