At first glance, Oscar nominee Bill Nighy’s character in Living might seem like the movie’s villain. Living begins not with Nighy’s fastidious bureaucrat Mr. Williams, but with one of his underlings, Mr. Wakeling (Alex Sharp), who’s upbeat and eager on his first day working for London’s Public Works department in 1953. Wakeling’s co-workers immediately disabuse him of any notions of making a difference in the lives of his fellow citizens. The purpose of Public Works, it seems, is to avoid accomplishing anything, and the chief obstacle to progress is Mr. Williams.
But Williams is about to have an Ebenezer Scrooge-like awakening, once he learns that he’s suffering from terminal cancer and has only a few months left to live. Suddenly the dull, respectable life he’s built for himself thanks to decades of government service seems especially meaningless, and he finds himself drifting through his days, not even bothering to return to the office. As Wakeling and the rest of Williams’ staff wonder what happened to him, he attempts to grasp onto whatever life he has left.
He withdraws half of his life savings and heads to a seaside resort town, where he carouses with a hedonist (Tom Burke) he meets in a café. Back in London, he strikes up a friendship with the vivacious young Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), whose cheerful attitude was always out of place at Public Works. Williams’ equally dour son and daughter-in-law are scandalized by what they think is his affair with a younger woman, but he sees Miss Harris as someone to admire and learn from, not as a sexual object.
Still, even her bright presence can’t bring purpose to his existence, and it’s only when he finally returns to work that Williams starts truly living. He makes it his personal mission to aid a group of women who want to turn a damaged urban area into a small children’s playground. They’ve been getting the runaround from Public Works and every other department, and Williams plucks their file from a giant pile and sets about doing whatever it takes to make their project a reality.
Although Living is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 Japanese film Ikiru, it captures a distinctly British reserve, in a post-World War II era of rigid, dutiful politeness. The men all wear identical suits and hats, and everyone scrupulously follows social protocol (Williams’ first name might as well be “Mister”). When Williams gets the news of his condition, his only response is, “Quite.” Even as he barrels through his fellow bureaucrats to untangle the byzantine approval process for the park, he does so with quiet forcefulness rather than brash insistence.
Nighy, who’s played plenty of outlandish characters, brings that same quiet forcefulness to his performance, conveying Williams’ internal transformation with minimal fuss. He’s balanced by Wood as the gregarious Miss Harris, who exudes positivity and warmth. Living follows the broad plot outline of Ikiru, but it’s gentler and more optimistic. Screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro (also Oscar-nominated) streamlines the story, and director Oliver Hermanus evokes the time period via warm, vibrant colors, a constrained aspect ratio, and a lush vintage-style score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch. It’s charmingly old-fashioned, like it could have been made in the same era it’s set in.
The filmmakers avoid the story’s potential for cheap sentiment, exhibiting the same tasteful restraint as their characters. They don’t dwell on Williams’ demise, and they opt for humble reflection over easy victories. Despite its potentially morbid subject matter, Living is a lovely, tender story about the value of human connection and the power of small gestures of kindness. ♦
Living
