In 1886 Leo Tolstoy wrote a Russian novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". This inspired the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa to make “Ikuru”. Which in turn was remade into 2022’s brilliant “Living” staring Bill Nighy which was set around a 1950’s London planning office.
It’s the age-old story of bureaucrats who are paid by the State to enact policies and enable smooth running but inevitably spend their entire careers taking wages, pretending to be busy and achieving nothing.
The Bill Nighy character was nicknamed “the Zombie” by a youthful colleague. He realised his own youth had been wasted, he had failed to do any living and this all becomes focussed when the protagonist is given 6 months to live.
After a planned suicide by the sea is abandoned in favour of alcohol and serious contemplation he acquires an invigorating epiphany that his life's work didn't have to add up to nothing.
And it's this realisation that gives him the strength and vision to stand up to the suystem, his colleagues and superiors by challenging all of these professional obstructionists to do their jobs because as the audience knows, there are no legitimate reasons to delay, prevent or reject an application to turn a bomb site into a children’s playground.
No one needs to be in their last moments of life to understand that just because they and their department has not helped anyone or contributed anything of value to society for decades.
We all recognise that bureauratic institutions are protected from real world norms and consequences, but as Tolstoy noted two centuries ago, institutions are unfit for purpose because bureaucracies breed zombies.