Still Life (Uberto Pasolini, 2013)

John May, a solitary man who works quietly and conscientiously in a council office, tasked with locating the next of kin of the departed, is confronted with sudden redundancy due to budget cuts, but still feels duty-bound to complete one last case. This takes him on a search from one end of the country to the other, as he pieces together the fractured life and death of an alcoholic who died alone.
As the title suggests, the visual style of the film is a collage of long, carefully-framed static shots which mirror May's almost OCD-like obsession with creating order out of chaos, including leaving no previous case forgotten, just as the title also alludes to the static nature of his existence. The director may be Italian, but the ambience is very much that of a small, down-at-heel and neglected England, with a social concern echoing that of  Loach but without Loach's overt fury at the callousness of the powers that be. Its very quietness and slowness is a virtue: it draws the viewer in hypnotically, and Eddie Marsan is immaculate as May, with his small, sad expressive eyes and unassuming demeanour. The end, after there is a glimmer of light for him at last, comes with a jolt that left me reeling.

7/10