Shot in the film ratio of the time it is set, LIVING is the story of an ordinary man, reduced by years of oppressive office routine to a shadow existence, who at the eleventh hour makes a supreme effort to turn his dull life into a legacy.
It is1953. London shattered by WWII is still recovering. Mr. Williams a venerable civil servant, is an impotent cog within the city’s bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild. Buried under paperwork at the office, lonely at home, his life has long felt empty and meaningless, a malignancy mirrored in the medical diagnosis he receives.
Shattered, he retreats to a seaside resort, is picked up by a local decadent, and flirts with hedonism before rejecting it as his solution. Back in London, he finds himself drawn to the natural vitality of Margaret, a young woman who once worked under his supervision and is now determined to spread her wings.
LIVING is a re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and is directed by Oliver Hermanus from a script by Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the novels The Remains of The Day and Never Let Me Go. The screenplay was nominated at this year’s Oscars but was bettered by Women Talking
In terms of character, Bill Nighy as Mr. Williams, presents a man fearful of rousing the sleeping demon within him. The stiff upper lip is the stifling lower depth of living. Stoic is static. Worse stagnant, nonsustaining, back water brackish rather than babbling like a brook. In his hands, tragedy is served as polite embarrassment. No wonder Margaret calls him Mr Zombie.
The performance was nominated for an Academy award but this minnow was swallowed by a whale.
LIVING enjoys an elegiac score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, meticulous production design from Helen Scott, era evoking cinematography from Jamie D. Ramsay and exquisite wardrobe work in Sandy Powell’s costumes.
LIVING follows in the long line of narrative fiction where a human need for contrition and absolution is the crux and self hood attained by self-abnegation is the chase. Chill and chaste.
