Living

I have a bit of a soft spot for movies set in the grey, emotionally repressed landscape of post-war Britain. I also happen to believe that Kazuo Ishiguro is one of our best living authors and Bill Nighy is always worth the price of admission. So I went into this preview of "Living" with high expectations and emerged happy that they had been met.

In a way this film reminds me of "Brief Encounter" in that the emotional tone is subdued with deep feelings left unsaid and unshared. Nighy's character is a man of the age and he's led a controlled, functional life of duty. It takes a brush with death to break this control and to let his Mr. Williams belatedly catch up on all that has passed him by.

It's a simple tale and yet I cannot deny that several poignant moments bought a tear to my eye. There's laughter too but this is a bittersweet film that leaves enough space for you to reflect on your own life and where you might have squeezed more juice from the journey.

Now I understand that the original film "Ikiru" is even better and I can well believe that with Akira Kurosawa at the helm. However I haven't seen it (yet) and I am more than satisfied by this modern retelling.

Over the years Bill Nighy has become one of my favorite actors. My earliest recollection of him was 20 years ago in "Love Actually", where he played Billy Mack, a washed-up musician who makes a hit Christmas recording. He has a certain style and it resonates with me.

During this filming he was 71 or 72. Here he is the main character, Williams, who is the long-time boss of a small group in the London County offices in the early 1950s. All the men wear Bowler style hats. Williams is always very quiet and very polite, he keeps an arms distance from his crew, not even riding in the same train car to and from work.

As he grew into an adult all he really aspired to was being a Gentleman. Traditionally, an English gentleman was the lowest rank of the gentry, similar to the French nobleman. He worked diligently, was friendly to everyone, but seemingly had no interests outside work. He even had a distant relationship with his married son who still lived with him.

Then he received the diagnosis, he only had a few months to live. His first reaction was to make up for lost time, to meet strangers and have fun. But that was an empty exercise. Of note, during the "fun" a lady stole his Bowler hat, he replaced it with a Fedora, a new style for him, which was a sign of his new perspective. He would do something meaningful before he was gone, he would push through a community project that had been pigeonholed for too long.

So it is really a character study of this simple but complex man, Williams. It works very well. It is a remake of the highly regarded 1952 Kurosawa movie "Ikiru". My wife and I enjoyed it at home on DVD from our public library.

Before watching this, I have often thought of Brief Encounter as the quintessential film on English repression.

I have to add this. And it (openly, honestly) echoes the Lean classic in other ways, including a piano classical piece alongside steam engine imagery in the first act.

And what a lead performance. I've never been blown away by Nighy before. This is incredible. Every crushing moment, every unspoken word, every flinch. I was right there with him.

The closing imagery is beyond beautiful. And stay for the credits, with a beautiful rendition of a song that features in the story (and breaks your heart).

If you ever feel untethered, purposeless, this may mean an awful lot to you. It does to me.

Pushed to the very brink of a bureaucratic apocalypse a restrained man, Mr Williams, reaches out to low hanging branches to save himself from obscurity after learning of a terminal illness.

What follows is the emergence of uncharacteristic behaviour of Mr Williams to perhaps enjoy the freshness of life. The film does not plunge into clichés and self pity. It is charming and warm. An elderly man coming to terms of the end of his life. People of a certain age will engage in the meaning as it perhaps communicates a timeless message that we as humans are extremely selfish and fail to understand the society we live in.

I encourage everyone to watch the film, get absorbed in the incredible performances by all the actors and actresses. There are notable cameos but it all comes together in a very emotional way. Bill Nighy is excellent and the supporting cast also.

The film will be remembered and will join the ranks of the classics.

From the opening footage of 1950s London to the closing credits this is a simply exquisite film. Bill Nighy is perfect in the lead role of the senior civil servant who is forced to confront his own mortality and Amy Lou Wood and Alex Sharp provide fine support at the other end of the age spectrum. There are some lovely scenes all played with understated panache and whilst the storyline is undoubtedly a little sad the film leaves the viewer appreciative of what's really important in life. It also achieves this in an understated, non preachy and gentle tone. There's also a fine soundtrack throughout and a lovely final scene to round it all off.