Uberto Pasolini’s Still Life is rightfully astonishing considering the images have a hauntingly beautiful detail to them. Pasolini created the film as the writer and director after working as a producer on The Full Monty. When Marsan Eddie, the lead actor, is cast in the movie, he tends to land as the center focus of the scene. In the film, he plays a 44-year-old man who happens to be meticulous to a fault, therefore, he is fastidiously going about his daily job.
As it is, employment has meant an investment of 22 years with Kennington Council. For John May (Marsan), it means doing a lot of contemplation about the mortality of others. It is unclear whether a faint spark within this most hardworking of people has been extinguished forever.
John’s last case, and what he knew to be the last case of his life, revolves around a movie that is beautifully sentimental and remembers the final touches of the active workforce. The borough had made it clear that his services were no longer required. While being laid off, he is bluntly told by Andrew Buchan, who plays the role of John’s now overblown employer, that he might be better suited for ‘a job where people are alive for a change’. Buchan acts the part of a petty bureaucratic figure stepping out of the school of Charles Dickens. Petty dignitaries who enjoy boasting over their supposed importance are commonplace.
Inevitably puzzled by losing a job he was emotionally vested in, John decides to pour over his newfound freedom by focusing on the one specific alcoholic skeleton in a very vague closet he plans on preserving. As a result, John allows himself to not only be vindictive but also careless.
What kills me is that this individual lived right there, so John could have assisted him during his lifetime, and is now dead-set on helping him even after he’s expired. In spite of the underwhelming branding that came earlier, the narrow dullness does infect windows of color, and John works like a detective assigned a life-changing mystery. From my perspective, Pasolini responds in an equal manner. It is likely that in later portions of this writing, no one should elaborate much further to ensure that they do not remove the shroud of mystery from a script which is, arguably at best, attempting to do as little as possible and somehow integrate into it one more curve in the narrative and emotion.
For sure, you will spot traits of Chekov’s characters at their most withdrawn in Marsan’s defining reserve, which is a shell (and is likely what some will define as protective) that is torn by the blossoming friendship he forms with the Kelly (Joanne Froggatt, pictured above) daughter of the pathetic idiot on whose scent John has slated what is left of his career.
Marsan has collaborated with Mike Leigh before and his performance here is soaked with that same level of care and detail, right from the way the hair is groomed to the way John sets his meals, that are rather unpleasant to look at, as though they were carefully crafted still life paintings. Looking both doughy and lost one moment and sweet faced the next, Marsan anchors the film with an unshowy masterclass, and it is this kind of performance that complements the many colors Portman’s score presents, especially the harp and Spanish guitar. (Portman was Pasolini’s wife.)
Portrayed brilliantly, John is a classic case of a mundane but uniquely skilled person that people like to ignore, and yet he is the sort of person that is underappreciated by films and publications alike: somebody that isn’t in search of validation but is willing to roll out of bed, take care of business, and have something to show for it. Unlike the more privileged among us, those who expect the world to hand them everything on a silver platter, such people speak completely out of the box, come out of nowhere, or in fact send spectacular as the setbacks. My favorite moment was when I was watching John sprinting after an ice cream truck while shouting at the top of his lungs, which resulted in shattering the glass door at the back, spilling ice cream onto the pavements.
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