A remake of "生きる (Ikiru)" with a shorter running time? That must mean it's better than the original, right? Unfortunately, while "Living" trims the fat, it's still the same odd plot structure. *SPOILERS* You see, a man (Kanji Watanabe and Rodney Williams, respectively) is told he has less than a year to live. After he dies, his co-workers feel that a lot of questions were left unanswered and they try to figure things out. This isn't a bad concept, but each movie feels like the result of two different scripts being stitched together. The portion with the co-workers lasts about 1/3 of the running time (except for the brief epilogue). He continues to appear in flashbacks, but they're told from the co-workers' point of view. So the deceased character's mysterious behavior is treated as a puzzle that the audience has to put together alongside the living characters? But we already know the answers. Oh, well, at least this version doesn't feature a scene where the protagonist makes a request to his peers while we hear an instrumental version of "Happy Birthday". Yes, I know the song had been sang by some extras in a previous scene, but it had nothing to do with what Watanabe was doing in the present. Even if there's some hidden meaning or symbolism that's eluding me, it's a distracting choice that doesn't complement the atmosphere of the moment. It's interesting how Bill Nighy uses a lot of the same mannerisms that Takashi Shimura used, and yet, he's more convincing. What the latter did came off as overacting.

 

5/10