Living Review

Living is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 drama Ikiru. This remake changes the setting to 1950s London and has Bill Nighy in the lead role.

Mr. Williams (Nighy) is a senior bureaucrat at London County Council. His world gets shattered when he gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. With only a limited amount of time to live Mr. Williams befriends a young co-worker, Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), and sets out to complete one last project.

Living has gathered a lot of praise and buzz. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and earned nine BIFA nominations. It’s quite a feat considering how revered Ikiru is.

Ikiru and Living have a universality to them since they are both films about morality. It doesn’t matter where someone lives, facing our mortality is something everyone must deal with at some point. Everyone reacts in different ways if they were given such tragic news.

The story of Ikiru does translate well to 1950s Britain. Britain and Japan are island nations that were battered by the Second World War. One of the plot points in Living was a group of ladies wanting to convert a bombed-out site into a children’s playground. The 1950s was a time known for emotional repression and the British have the reputation for having a stiff upper lip. This clashes with the hard news Mr. Williams received.

This crash of cultural expectations and harsh reality leads to a fantastic performance from its leading man. Mr. Williams was shown to be a cold, distant man to his colleagues, and getting the news shocked him. There were two fantastic moments when Mr. Williams interacted with his son, Michael (Barney Fishwick). Mr. Williams needed to tell his son about his illness, it was clear on his face, but he couldn’t find the words. Nighy’s performance felt real during these moments. Nighy looks set to get an Oscar nomination for his performance.

Aimee Lou Wood was also impressive. Wood played a sweet and friendly young woman who gradually became Mr. Williams’ only confidante. Her happy foundations were shaken when Mr. Williams told her about his terminal illness. It was a great showcase for Wood’s talents beyond her role in Sex Education.

Due to the Living’s themes, it had a melancholic tone. This made Living a companion piece with another film released in 2022, The Banshees of Inisherin. The Banshees of Inisherin was about depression whilst Living was about mortality, and both looked at loneliness. Although they had a different approach because in The Banshees of Inisherin isolation was forced on its main character, whilst in Living, Mr. Williams’ isolation was self-inflicted.

The theme of death in Living made it thematically similar to The Banshees of Inisherin in another way by looking at a person’s legacy and existentialism. Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin was concerned about his legacy and turned to write music whilst in Living Mr. Williams wondered what his legacy would be, leading him to put his energy into one last meaningful act.

This look at a man’s mortality, Living was a slow-paced film. Moments were allowed to linger. At times Living felt like a play because moments were allowed to play out in real-time, such as when Mr. Williams had dinner with his son and daughter-in-law, and the dialogue had an overcooked quality to it. This was the case when Mr. Williams went to the seaside and spent the day with a local playwright.

Whilst Living was a sombre film, there were also moments of humour. There were witty exchanges and lines littered throughout the film. There was also some satire because of the role the ladies played who were petitioning the council to construct a playground. They were given the run around since they were sent from department to department. It felt like something from The Simpsons, Futurama, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine where characters must battle local bureaucracy and end up going around in circles.

Living was directed by Oliver Hermanus, a South African filmmaker who was making his first film beyond his homeland’s borders. He gave Living a classic feel like it was a film from the ‘50s. This was shown during the film’s opening credits which were big and bold as it played over footage of 1950s London. There was an emphasis on long, drawn-out takes so the actors were allowed to perform uninterrupted. It made Living into a cinematic throwback.

Living was a powerhouse film from an acting standpoint, and it was a thoughtful piece about life, but it is a hard watch due to the downbeat tone.

Living will be released digitally on 3rd March 2023, and physically on 13th March 2023