LIVING 12A
Mighty Nighy…
★★★★★ OUT 4 NOVEMBER CINEMAS
Mr Zombie. Sort of dead… but not dead.” That’s one colleague’s verdict on frosty, progress-blocking 1950s planning officer Mr. Williams (a superb Bill Nighy), whose days are transformed when he receives a life-changing diagnosis.
Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s delicate script turns this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 seize-the-day classic Ikiru into a piercing portrait of a misguided life. But unlike Ishiguro’s buttoned-up The Remains Of The Day (1993), Living takes a lovely tender turn, sparked by Aimee Lou Wood’s upbeat intervention as compassionate secretary Margaret, aided by idealistic civil servant Peter (Alex Sharp).
Oliver Hermanus’ thoughtful direction captures the bowler-hatted deference of ’50s Britain in sly satirical snippets of bureaucratic jostling. We also get a sure sense of Williams’ achingly stiff-upper-lip home life. The film has a gorgeously retro look, all panelled pubs, steam trains and Bisto-coloured sitting rooms. Yet Hermanus digs deftly under the surface to find what characters are hiding from themselves.
Pleating the story into intriguing flashbacks, Living unfolds Williams’ simple story as a series of gentle, elegant surprises. None of this would gel, however, without Nighy’s extraordinary performance, an understated masterpiece of tightly wound repression and regret. Full of dignified restraint and yearning, it may be the best thing he’s ever done.