Producers: Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen   Director: Oliver Hermanus  Screenplay: Kazuo Ishiguro   Cast: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, Adrian Rawlins, Oliver Chris, Hubert Burton, Zoe Boyle, Barney Fishwick, Patsy Ferran, Jessica Flood, Nicola McAuliffe, Michael Cochrane and Lia Williams   Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade: B+

It’s always dangerous to remake a classic film, but this English-language revisiting of Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” is largely an admirable effort, due not so much to Oliver Hermanus’ careful direction or the respectful screenplay by noted novelist Kazuo Ishiguro as to the impeccable lead performance of Bill Nighy.  He’s long been an actor whose mere presence could lift even mediocre material, and this is one of his finest accomplishments, a fastidiously underplayed turn that might remind you a bit of Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner.

Nighy’s emotionless Mr. Williams is like the walking dead—one of his co-workers has nicknamed him Mr. Zombie—even before he receives a diagnosis of terminal cancer.  He’s a government bureaucrat heading an office in the Department of Public Works in the early 1950s, where he and his sedentary staff spend most of their time pushing papers from one box on their desks to another, accomplishing next to nothing.  A widower who lives with his distant son Michael (Barney Fishwick) and daughter-in-law Fiona (Patsy Ferran), who’s unhappy with the arrangement, he follows the same routine every day, commuting to the office in his well-pressed suit, his polished shoes and his bowler hat, umbrella always to hand, filling the working hours with little talk or human connection, and returning home to a bleakly uneventful evening.  Of his underlings, Rusbridger (Hubert Burton), Middleton (Adrian Rawlins) and Hart (Oliver Chris) are as hidebound as he; only newcomer Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp) wants to accomplish something—anything—while free-spirited Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), who has coined Williams’ unflattering nickname, is looking for a job elsewhere.

After receiving the bad news about his health, Williams is unable to tell his son of his condition, instead confounding his staff by simply not coming in to work.  Instead, contemplating suicide, he escapes to a shabby seaside resort, where he abruptly confides his plan to a chatty local rake named Sutherland (Tom Burke), who insists on taking him out for a night on the town, or at least its low-rent fringes.  Williams forlornly gives himself over to the supposed pleasures of the place, even mournfully singing a song in a club as memories overtake him, but after his return to London his intention is to resume his ordinary life as best he can.

At least that’s the case until he encounters Miss Harris, who has in fact left the office to take a job as a waitress in hopes of becoming a tea restaurant manager, and impetuously invites her to lunch and a movie—“I Was a Male Bride” with Cary Grant, no less.  Her bubbly personality convinces him to accomplish one real project in his last days—the construction of a small playground promoted by a quartet of determined ladies (Zoe Boyle, Lia Williams, Jessica Flood and Nicola MaAuliffe), which he pushes forward with dedication that floors his staff, his departmental colleagues and the minister (Michael Cochrane) that oversees them all.

“Living” is tighter than “Ikiru,” coming in as edited by Chris Wyatt at under two hours where Kurosawa’s take was thirty minutes longer, even though it adds a romantic subplot for Harris and Wakeling and is faithful to its source in virtually every particular, down to the famous shot of the protagonist on a playground swing and the ironic twist involving his subordinates’ vow to follow his late-in-life example of commitment to doing good.  It mimics the look and feel of films from the fifties as well, from the retro titles through the Helen Scott’s colorful production design, Sandy Powell’s on-point costumes, and Jamie D. Ramsay’s unfussy but elegant cinematography. Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s score fits the mold, too.

The cast is overall fine, with Sharp and Wood nicely contrasted to the officious trio of Burton, Rawlins and Chris and the far from familial Fishwick and Ferran.  Burke is charismatic even if Sutherland isn’t the most credible character in the world.

But it’s Nighy who sells what might, after all, have easily descended into sentimental mawkishness.  Suppressing his frequent penchant for flamboyant eccentricity, he calculates every tic, pause and nervous smile for optimal effect, exuding Williams’ faded gentility as well as his determined energy in the face of escalating pain.

Thanks to Nighy’s flawlessly gauged performance, the gamble of reimagining Kurosawa’s film in British terms turns out handsomely in all respects.      

Producers: Noah Baumbach, David Heyman and Uri Singer   Director: Noah Baumbach   Screenplay: Noah Baumbach  Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin, Lars Eidinger, Sam Gold, Carlos Jacott, Francis Jue, Danny Wolohan and Barbara Sukowa  Distributor: Netflix

Grade: B+

Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel has long been considered important—some would say prescient, even visionary—but also deemed unfilmable.  That hasn’t deterred Noah Baumbach who, on the heels of his highly lauded “Marriage Story,” persuaded Netflix to bankroll his crack at it.  The result is a film that, while it naturally edits out some of the book’s episodes (even famous ones) and makes other alterations, adjustments and additions (most notably a bravura dance sequence over the end credits), is actually a remarkably faithful adaptation, down to much of the dialogue.  That’s not entirely to its advantage, since while the book may have been ahead of its time, now it feels a bit behind ours.

Yet Baumbach has made a valiant attempt to wrestle into cinematic form a tome that, while it lacks the literal heft of many classics and is geographically limited, covers an enormous amount of territory: it’s part academic satire, part domestic dramedy, part disaster epic, part mystery and part disquisition on the clash between reality and imagination, taking time to critique consumerism, the pharmaceutical industry, religion and the public’s fascination with catastrophe—all wrapped up in an overarching rumination on the use of all those nattering forms of “white noise” as distractions from a pervasive fear of death.  One might assume that any attempt to adapt such a  book for the screen would be a mess, but like the novel Baumbach’s effort is elegant, precise, carefully constructed and tonally consistent, though deliberately bizarre.  If the result sometimes falls short of its source, the film is still a noble effort to capture the book’s idiosyncratic spirit on film.

The protagonist of the piece, Jack, or J.A.K. to use his publishing name, Gladney (Adam Driver), is an internationally renowned Professor of Hitler Studies at a place called College-on-the-Hill—in fact, he is recognized as the creator of the field. He attracts legions of awestruck students, and his closest faculty colleague, relative newcomer Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) is so impressed with his accomplishment that he asks for his help to win him administrative support for his plan to emulate him by establishing a similar niche discipline devoted to Elvis Presley.  The result is a humorous class-presentation duet in which they compare Hitler and Elvis in rapid-fire fact-shouting, an academic vaudeville routine that holds everybody, including fellow faculty, spellbound. 

But Gladney knows he’s a bit of a fraud.  Afraid that attendees at an upcoming Hitler conference he’ll be hosting will learn that he doesn’t know German (apart from, a few phrases), he’s taking language lessons on the sly from a sketchy teacher (Danny Wolohan), though without much success.  Otherwise he and other academic colleagues as peculiar as Murray (but presumably tenured) spend much of their time sitting around cafeteria tables blurting out faddish observations that have little connection to each other and are simply left hanging.

At home Jack and his third wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), a physical trainer like him on a third marriage, preside unsteadily over a brood of children: hyper-analytical Heinrich (Sam Nivola) and intuitive daughter Steffie (May Nivola), both his by previous wives, and Babette’s intense daughter Denise (Raffey Cassidy), along with their own young son Wilder (Henry and Dean Moore).  The domestic atmosphere is marked by vigorous overlapping conversations and a habit of gathering together in front of the television for news reports on plane crashes.

It’s interrupted by a near-to-home disaster, the collision of a gasoline truck with a train transporting toxic chemicals that sends a plume of black smoke into the air.  The result is a mandatory evacuation that sends the family on a road trip marked by hallucinatory scenes of carnage, close shaves with calamity, and a stop at a deserted gas station that might have left Jack contaminated, at least according to some very speculative scientific information derived from a computer simulation.

But in the aftermath he finds that it’s Babette who’s really obsessed with a fear of death, so much so that she’s entered into an adulterous relationship with a sinister scientist called Gray (Lars Eidinger) who can provide an experimental drug designed to address such a fixation, though one with weird side effects.  Out of jealousy Jack determines to confront the chemist, which he does in a scene reminiscent of the final meeting of Humbert and Quilty; but it proves a less fatal encounter, leading to a meeting with a nun-nurse (Barbara Sukowa) whose ministrations will hardly fill their spiritual void.  But that closing dance number suggests that a place other than a church serves as a substitute venue for that function in society, at least that of 1984, when “White Noise” is set.

The film is as likely as the book to frustrate and antagonize as it is to enthrall.  While some will smile in agreement at its quirky reflections on American culture, both high and low, others will find its satirical strokes either obvious or baffling.  And for every viewer mesmerized by the stately, affected style adopted by Baumbach, cinematographer Lol Crawley and editor Matthew Hannam, there will be another put off by it.

It’s difficult, however, not to be impressed by their facility in achieving the slightly surrealistic mood they’re aiming for, and by the exquisite contributions of production designer Jess Gonchor and costumer Ann Roth in recreating an exaggerated recreation of mid-eighties suburbia.  Danny Elfman’s playfully deranged score adds to the oddball atmosphere.

No less important is the success of the cast in fitting themselves into the world DeLillo, as filtered through Baumbach, creates.  The language, which somehow sounds peculiar and unerringly right all at once, requires careful delivery, and Driver, Gerwig, Cheadle and all the supporting players, including the youngsters, manage the job skillfully.  Embodying characters that are both slightly cartoonish and utterly earnest is a difficult balancing act to pull off, and the fact that the actors walk the tightrope so effectively is a major contribution to the film’s effect.

The mordant humor and caustic message of “White Noise” will not be to everyone’s taste, but Baumbach and company have at the very least proven that DeDillo’s brilliant 1985 take on American society was not so unfilmable after all.