Living (2021 | UK | 102 minutes | Oliver Hermanus)
Whether the world needed a re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru transposed to 1950s London is a question for another day, but if you’re going to make one — as Oliver Hermanus did — there’s perhaps no one quite like Kazuo Ishiguro to craft a symphonic tribute to the deep wells of emotion lurking within the stoic reserved protocols of a formal bureaucracy. Even better to cast the magnificent Bill Nighy in the lead role of a long-repressed Brit whose tragic diagnosis with a case of “bloody handkerchief disease” portends an impending demise and motivates an occasion to consider if he even remembers how to be alive.
Having presided for decades over a Department of Public Works whose primary measure of success is the height of “skyscrapers” of delayed requests, Nighy’s Mister Williams rules his small team with whispery rigor and predictable precision (so much so that one of his subordinates gives him the nickname Mister Zombie). A longtime widower who raised a child in the wake of his (presumably wealthy) wife’s sudden death, he has a distant relationship with his adult son even though they live under the same room. So it’s some sense of propriety that motivates him to keep his impending mortality from his family and friends (if he has any) and instead rely on the vitality of near-strangers to evaluate what remains of his time on earth. First, in the form of an overnight seaside bacchanal with a louche artist (Tom Burke, in a near-reprise from his role in The Souvenir) who gleefully guides him through what remains of the towns back alleys, late night saloons, and after hours burlesques. Later, he takes inspiration from the company of a young woman whose prospects were so limited in the civil service that she eagerly took an upgrade to assistant managing a corner cafe.
These, however, are mere diversions from what will be his small but crowning achievement. Nighy is just the man for the job, encapsulating the deeply buried regret through every bone in his skeletal frame and each micro-expression of his taught skinned face. Just as he’s spurned into a truly late-life renaissance by an admiration of children balking at their parent’s calls to leave their playmates for dinner, the film takes a sharp change of perspective. It’s in this last act that the effect of a small mastery of the tedious bureaucracy that sustained him is reflected through the ripple effect that it had on others. The cinematography — smoky city hall interiors never quite warmed by the streaming light from perpetual gray skies, the reprieve of a tavern’s warm glow — is gorgeous, the performances impeccable, and there’s a treacly monologue that nevertheless tugs at the heartstrings. Although it stands on its own two feet, it even might make you want to watch (or revisit) the originzl and there are far worse outcomes than that.
Living was an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.