HIFF: Brunch with 3 Directors: Oliver Hermanus, Peter Hedges, and Volker Schlondorff

You cannot take your eyes off Bill Nighy in his superb performance in Living, Oliver Hermanus’ film, the Hamptons International Film Festival opening night feature. A remake of Akira Kurasawa’s Ikiru with a script by Kazuo Ishigura, Living follows a man played by Nighy, a higher up in a bureaucracy that specializes—as is the nature of bureaucracies—in getting nothing done. At a desk piled high with folders of delayed projects, Nighy is overwhelmed by the pyramid of inaction until a younger man joins the firm, the wonderful Alex Sharp, and Nighy learns he has but a short time to live. A young, perky woman (Aimee Lou Wood) shows him how to “live,” providing an education far from the scandal his family thinks. From South Africa, Oliver Hermanus moved to London to make this feature, and moreover, moved to our table at Nick & Toni’s restaurant for the annual filmmakers’ brunch. The hardest part of making the film, he said, was casting on Zoom, exulting now in casting a series he’s been hired to direct in person. 

Director Peter Hedges joined the brunch table too. His The Same Storm utilizes laptops and cell phones to get into the lives of 24 characters during the Covid lockdown.

And just as the last coffee cups and quiche plates were swept up by the Nick & Toni’s wait staff, up came a dapper bald man sporting a scarf, May I join your table, he asked, accented. Are you Volker?, I asked gamely. Yes. Volker Schlondorff, the director of The Tin Drum among other classic movies based on classic literature. He had even directed Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman. You mean the tv one, I said gamely again. Well yes, it was in theaters worldwide, he corrected. Working with Arthur Miller was fine, he said, and he was always kind to Marilyn Monroe. So, he asked, what was Billy Wilder’s problem? Having stayed for a time on the Napeague strip, he made a film in Montauk about a man (Stellan Skarsgaard) who goes to the tip of Long Island—famous spots like Duryea’s Dock-- with a former lover (Nina Hoss, so great in the new movie Tar opposite Cate Blanchett) following the book by Max Frisch. It was never distributed. Now that’s a scandal!

Well, if you linger at brunch, you never know what legends may show up.