Living, 2022.
Directed by Oliver Hermanus.
Starring Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, Adrian Rawlins, Oliver Chris, Michael Cochrane, Zoe Boyle, Lia Williams, Richard Cunningham, Ffion Jolly, Jamie Wilkes, John MacKay, Celeste Dodwell, Hubert Burton, Anant Varman, Jessica Flood, John Mackay, Jonathan Keeble, Barney Fishwick, Patsy Ferran, Eunice Roberts, and Nichola McAuliffe.
SYNOPSIS:
A veteran civil servant and bureaucratic cog in the rebuilding of Britain post-WWII, Williams expertly pushes paperwork around a government office only to reckon with his existence when he’s diagnosed with a fatal illness.
Upon the bureaucrats making their daily commute to London County Hall in Living, the personnel appears to be working. However, the stacks of paper in every direction suggest otherwise. Led by Williams (an empty and existentially moving Bill Nighy), no one really has much interest in getting any work done. The lackadaisical effort is so extreme that the only female coworker, Aimee Lou Wood’s Margaret, has amusingly come up with cheeky nicknames related to the various ways her coworkers pull up a façade of keeping busy, like “the hoverer” for the man that holds his pen in place over a piece of paper without actually writing anything on it.
During a heartfelt conversation and tender moment of honesty, Margaret reveals to Williams that her nickname for him is “zombie.” For roughly 30 years, the man has come into work every day at the same mundane position yielding nonexistent results. It’s hardly living. Williams has now been diagnosed with a terminal illness that has him rethinking the past and his current existence to such a degree that he ups and stops coming to work for months. It’s time to discover what living really means.
If the plot sounds so earlier, director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro are adapting Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, translating it to 1950s England. The remake largely succeeds due to the quietly powerful performance from Bill Nighy, as Williams hides his cancer from his self-centered son and daughter-in-law there only seem to care about how he can benefit them while going out for a night on the town with Tom Burke’s Sutherland, a stranger from a diner that seems to be living the high life. The journey takes them to a nightclub, where Williams eventually realizes spending time this way is also not really his speed.
Following that, Williams runs into Margaret on the street, who still needs a reference signed for an assistant manager job at a restaurant she plans to shift over to. While writing the letter of recommendation and conversing with her, he also latches onto her zest for life, quickly becoming attached to her, making for a simultaneously cute, devastating, and awkward dynamic for Margaret considering how the general public might interpret their spending entire days together.
There’s a point where Margaret, for as much as she is enjoying herself, explicitly states she has to go home now, while Williams, who does not want to go home and be alone with his dark and lonely thoughts, suggests having a drink together as one last stop for the day. It’s a low-key devastating moment simply because it would almost feel unbearable to hear Margaret say no, even though she has real and legitimate concerns over his clinginess.
There also happens to be a group of women lobbying to build a children’s playground for God knows how long, getting the runaround all over the building every time they try to push the movement forward. During his first day on the job, Alex Sharp’s Peter escorts them through practically every department, inevitably circling back to his floor that apparently can’t do anything. And while Williams decides that if he puts all his remaining energy into accomplishing this task, he will leave something beautiful and useful behind for the world, there is also a soul-crushing parallel; Pewter will become the next Williams if he works the job with the same bare minimum effort.
Aside from the nuanced and compelling performances, the swelling score from Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch and thoroughly detailed period piece costume design from Sandy Powell also add necessary liveliness to a film that somewhat requires its characters to be boring on paper. The journey those characters are on is anything but boring, but the bureaucratic setting doesn’t exactly allow them to be exciting. If anything, it’s actually immersive, just how authentic the film captures the dullness of the job.
A choice in the third act allows much of Living to be told from alternate perspectives (although there are still occasional scenes with Williams). Still, the film questionably changes tone into something a bit too mawkish, a bad trade-off for the stirring realism on display during the first hour. However, the story itself is so moving and life-affirming, with gently brilliant work from Bill Nighy (and a terrific supporting cast), that the total shift isn’t as jarring as it first appears. Living will have one feeling more alive once the credits roll.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
