(Credit: Film4)

When director Oliver Hermanus’ latest film, Living, was released last year, it received critical acclaim and nominations for the BAFTA, Golden Globes and SAG awards. Crowning off the impressive reception, the project even earned Hermanus his very first Oscar nomination, with lead actor Bill Nighy receiving a nod for his excellent work in the lead role. It wasn’t an easy project to get off the ground, however, with the screenwriter and renowned novelist Kazuo Ishiguro basing his film on Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru, yet, the true origins of the latter go back 130 years.

When Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Illych, was published in 1886, it caused something of a sensation. No piece of literature had dealt with the theme of death in quite the same way – not a sudden or tragic death on the battlefield or before a firing squad, which might provide a level of drama or noble self-sacrifice to a character’s demise, but a terribly ordinary death, expected in advance, of a terminal disease.

Tolstoy provided a riveting, masterfully written account, from the dying man’s point of view, of the fear, grief, and humiliation that accompany the dying process. Still, more strikingly, he depicts the title character’s painful realisations of having lived a trivial and largely wasted life despite his material success; his gaining perspective through the example of the kind and patient servant who looks after him during his illness; and finally, his belated spiritual awakening in his last days.

The story had an impact partly because government bureaucrat Ivan Illych, although full of regret at a life that was not well lived, was clearly no worse than the average man, only caught up in worldly pursuits and the trivia of daily existence in a way many can easily recognise. Tolstoy’s account of a man dealing with the larger questions his death forces him to face is almost unbearably direct, beautifully written, but harsh.

Attempts were eventually made to transfer Tolstoy’s work to film, using a variety of approaches to remake the very un-cinematic story. In 1985, it was adapted as the black-and-white, Soviet-era Russian film A Simple Death, directed by Alexander Kaldanovsky. The only Russian adaptation ever made of The Death of Ivan Illych, it is a pared-down and simplified version of the original novella, notable for including rather irrelevant audio of Tolstoy reading aloud from his own writings. It is more a minor tribute to Tolstoy than a true adaptation.

Some 15 years later, the story was updated and moved to contemporary California for Bernard Rose’s indie film IvansXtc, a project which endured controversy and funding issues due to suspicions in Hollywood that the filmmakers claimed Tolstoy as its inspiration to cover up the fact that the adventures of the dying lead character, Ivan, were meant to reference a famous studio magnate’s death from cocaine addiction. The Death of Ivan Illych also inspired Iranian director Ali Mosaffa’s multi-award-winning 2012 drama The Last Step.

In Mosaffa’s adaptation, the subject’s death takes place at the beginning of the film, and his thoughts on his own life and death come from his posthumous voice-over remarks over the course of a scrambled-chronology story of his life. Despite being remade as an eccentric comedy/drama, the film does succeed in exploring some of the weighty issues featured in the original novella. However, no adaptation seemed able to capture the impact of Tolstoy’s famous novella – with one much earlier exception.

In 1952, a young filmmaker, still largely unknown outside his native Japan, attempted to remake The Death of Ivan Illych in a film called Ikiru (‘To Live’). Vastly influential filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was to achieve fame for his later films: Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Ran, Kagemusha, Rashomon and others. Ikiru, however, was produced fairly early in Kurosawa’s career, before he became well known internationally; and along with Rashomon, released two years earlier, helped to establish his career and his reputation.

Ikiru is a loose adaptation of The Death of Ivan Illych, described as “inspired by” the story rather than directly based on it. It does not precisely follow the plotline of Tolstoy’s story and is set in contemporary Japan; however, it replicates the basic plot and, more importantly, captures the central concept and the tone of the story as no other adaptation has managed. Civil servant Kanji Watanabe is the central character, touchingly played by veteran actor Takashi Shimura, who worked with Kurosawa on several of his later films.

When Watanabe is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he is seen to go through many stages of grief, anger, and denial and seeks escape through various means, as Ivan Illych did. When he begins to accept and soberly ponder his situation, he recognises and regrets the failures and inadequacies of his life, whether toward his family or his work. It is when Watanabe determines to make amends with the short time left to him that the film diverges from Tolstoy’s novella. Tolstoy had his character understand the superficiality of his worldly concerns in order to prepare for the next life, according to the ideology of his Russian Orthodox faith – even though the novel is not overtly religious. Ikiru takes a more humanist approach. Watanabe looks back with regret on his office’s longstanding practice of relegating work to other departments or placing it on indefinite hold, endlessly delaying projects that could ease problems or improve life for the local residents.

While he is unable to overcome the inertia of his public works office, Watanabe becomes determined to complete at least one useful project in his remaining time. His obsession allows him to complete this simple task before his death, an accomplishment that is portrayed in a profoundly moving way. Kurosawa includes distinctive scenes following the main character’s death, which note the deeper value of his final achievement, but also satirically and sadly demonstrate the human tendency to be dragged down by the mundane, despite the best intentions.

As mentioned above, writer Kazuo Ishiguro was strongly influenced by Ikiru when he saw it in his youth and felt that many of his generation found it to be moving and inspiring, as he discussed in an interview following the release of Living. The idea of rewriting the film had been in his thoughts for some years. This included the plan to produce a version of Ikiru from an English perspective; Ishiguro was familiar with building stories, such as Remains of the Day, around postwar English culture, finding that this particular time and place reveals “something universal about human nature” and “facing up to the fear of emotions”, and would provide an ideal backdrop for this revisioning of Ikiru. He had always planned to set the film in England, sometime between 1938 and 1948; in the end, the film was set in the 1950s. The original material is openly acknowledged: the statement “based on Ikiru”, along with the name of Akira Kurosawa, is included in both the opening and closing credits.

Ishiguro had considerable influence on the making of the film beyond what is experienced by most scriptwriters. This includes casting choices. Actor Bill Nighy was always in the writer’s mind as playing the central role. When the idea for the remake was first proposed to producer Stephen Woolley, Ishiguro didn’t suggest a remake of Ikiru but more specifically asked, “What about a film based on Ikiru with Bill Nighy in the main part?” It was an inspired choice; Nighy’s subtle and restrained but moving performance holds the entire film together. He plays Mr Williams, a bureaucrat in a London county council who, like the parallel character in Ikiru, values neat and efficient management of paperwork well above accomplishing anything of use to the people his office serves.

As Ishiguro had anticipated, postwar London worked well for the remade story, and in the hands of director Oliver Hermanus, the recreation of the era is a highlight of the film. The production design by Helen Scott, who did such a remarkable job with Mothering Sunday, brings every aspect of the period to life, sparing no detail. Not only do the streets and interiors, the characters’ manner and speech, perfectly represent the time, but the film goes further, using distinctly 1950s-style opening credits and camera work and a soundtrack reminiscent of postwar films.

A scene in which the main character determines to “live a little”, trying to ward off death with some unfamiliar carousing, is done in exactly the manner of a ‘fun times’ montage from a 1950s Hollywood movie. The musical score, a postwar era replica yet incredibly effective at enhancing the mood of each scene, clearly received a great deal of care, employing an unusually large music department for the production. Even more impressive is the cinematography by Jamie Ramsay, which manages to sustain the look of a mid-20th-century film while employing unusual visual perspectives which add feeling or significance to ordinary activities.

A few minor changes have been made to the plot, mostly in order to accommodate its relocation to London. The family situation is simplified by making Mr Williams a widower. A newly hired young colleague, Mr Wakeling (Alex Sharp), takes on the position of an innocent observer, able to react emotionally in a way his more jaded office mates do not. Otherwise, the story parallels that of Ikiru, but with a more open poignancy to Mr Williams’ reaction to his impending death, to his new awareness of his own moral and emotional deadness (and learning that his staff secretly called him ‘Mr Zombie’); to his recollections of his youth; and finally, to his efforts to somehow make his final days count for something.

Williams’ eleventh-hour campaign to accomplish something of use is followed more closely and includes mildly comic scenes of Williams bravely challenging his office’s malicious inefficiency, dragging his mystified staff through the unfamiliar process of getting a community project accomplished without undue delay. As with Ikiru, much of his story is revealed in posthumous scenes surrounding his funeral. Williams’ colleagues are inspired by his example in spite of themselves and vow to “be true to Mr Williams’ memory” and serve their community, yet soon fall back into apathy and inaction, lacking imminent death to spur them on. The touching finale, a memory of Mr Williams in a moment of peace, having completed his self-assigned final task, is given a greater sweetness than in the original film and is augmented by images of local families enjoying the benefits of his work.

Ishiguro has accomplished what he intended: a remake worthy of the original material, perhaps even worthy of the Tolstoy work that first inspired it. It is a tribute to Ikiru, but not a blind tribute. Living is a remake that also stands on its own, an independent piece of work in spite of its clear parallels to an earlier film, equally effective and equally worth watching.