Vivre

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.

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.

A little slow paced for my taste, but I can't deny that Bill Nighy displayed a masterclass in subtle acting. Also I found it quite interesting that he took the role after sharing a taxi ride with the screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro who pitched him right in the spot. That's pretty confident of Nighy to accept the role after such an encounter, but yeah, what a great decision on his part. Other standouts on the performance end of things include Aimee Lou Wood and Alex Sharp. They have a bright future ahead of them and I can't wait to see what they choose next. Also shout out to the musical score which helped bolster the emotions and kept me awake.

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.

You've lived a life within the bounds of expectation, conformed to all the codes, rules, regulations, mastered the art of the transaction, never looking for reaction, played the game to par, avoiding altercations; but the hand you've just been dealt has caused confusion, as you realise you're living an illusion, blindly going through the motions, without feelings for devotions, now it's time to make a stand, faced with conclusions.

A wonderful performance from Bill Nighy that might get you thinking about your own mortality and whether your direction of travel is taking you where you want to go. A remake of Ikiru, it also reminded me of Bergman's Wild Strawberries.