Living - film review
Living - directed by Oliver Hermanus 2022
It’s an ambitious person who decides to remake a philosophical film by an icon of cinema, but if anyone was going to, enlisting the help of Kazuo Ishiguro was always going to be a wise move. The Japanese-born Nobel Literature (2017), Booker (1989) and Whitbread (1986) prize winner is exquisitely sensitive to nuance and obviously well versed in the culture of his birth country. His greatest works -The Remains of the Day (1989); Never Let Me Go (2005); Klara and the Sun (2021) have excelled in combining lucid prose with a yearning, wistful pathos that lingers years after the book has been closed.
Directed by Oliver Hermanus, Living remains mostly loyal to Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 Ikiro, and has been re-set in London in the same era as the original. Bill Nighy, looking worryingly like a starved, fragile songbird who has lost its song - you’ll find out why -stars as Rodney Williams, the head of a small department at a London County Council department. He goes about his affairs in an emotionally numb way, and seems to have no confidantes either at work or outside of it.
We find out that his wife died a few years ago, and we can only surmise as to whether he has entered this deadened state since or whether the marriage itself was emotionally sterile. We find out that he has a son indifferent to his well being who is nagged by his new wife to pressurise his father for money.
A new employee in the department, played by Alex Sharp, is bewildered to find his colleagues seem as uncommunicative and cold as his boss. He’s also surprised to find that genuine causes sent to the department for action are stashed in the inbox permanently, never to be revisited.
The only bright spark in the department is the sole female employee, played by Aimee Lou Wood. Her playful cheekiness draws him to her.
Then there is a turning point which I won’t divulge. It brings about change not only in the spirits of Mr Williams but also in the community.
As I was watching, I was aware that this film’s plot was a feather-light wisp, a classic story of redemption being its own reward not unlike Scrooge. And occasionally, pathos threatened to become bathos. But the presence of Nighy, an actor of supreme control, stopped it from ever becoming sentimental or preachy.. In this role he is a man whose life is wholly in his head, and who has learnt to not show the slightest feeling. There is a poignant scene where he rehearses talking to his son and daughter in law, but doesn’t get the chance to do so in reality because of their brusque and offhand manner. The cameo from Tom Burke as a hard-living writer, is fun, and there are glimpses of humour such as the salacious gossip-mongering of a busybody who sees Nighy enjoying his new lease of life, and the subsequent spluttering outrage of Williams’ shallow and judgemental daughter-in-law, who cares more about appearances than the psychological welfare of others. The petty power-play is also a delight, with suits vying to take credit for achievements they played no part in