LIVING

Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Living    United Kingdom
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:30 pm

Director:  Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Bill Nighy, Amy Lou Wood, Alex Sharp
Running Time: 102 minutes
Language: English 

Awards: British Independent Film Awards: Best Production Design; Hollywood Music in Media Awards:  Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: Best Actor (Bill Nighy);  Cameriaimage Awards: Best Cinematography; National Board of Review: Top 10 Independent Films; Palm Springs International Film Festival: Best Actor (Bill Nighy); Virginia Film Festival: Best Narrative Feature.  38 nominations

“Bill Nighy delivers a master class in acting as a stifled Brit bureaucrat who decides to seize the day before it's too late. Working in miniature to achieve major truths, this deeply human drama has the power to sneak up and knock you sideways.”—Peter Travers, ABC News 

In this exquisitely realized remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, director Oliver Hermanus teams with Nobel- and Booker Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro to renew a classic.

Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy) is a buttoned-down, pinstripe- and-bowler hat–clad stereotypical English gentleman in 1952, with a mid-level bureaucratic job in a postwar London county council. Through his taciturn manner, Mr. Williams lets his staff (which includes Aimee Lou Wood, Sex Education) know that maintaining the status quo on files is more important than progress.

One day Williams receives a dire diagnosis from his doctor and soon the tightly held reins of his very prosaic life begin to loosen. We discover he is a widower, estranged from his only son, with few friends and fewer interests. Williams realizes that he isn’t facing death; he’s been living it. And so, in the clumsy manner of one who is unpracticed in these things, he begins putting work aside for new experiences. 

In charmingly awkward sequences, Nighy beautifully captures that specific lead-up to the end of life and the inevitably accompanying questions: did I accomplish anything? Will I leave anything behind?

While the heart of the film is Nighy’s understated lead performance, equally as masterful is the profound sense of time and place created by the craft elements, notably production design by Helen Scott and costume design by the multiple Oscar–winning Sandy Powell. 

It’s all captured on screen by cinematographer Jamie Ramsay (Mothering Sunday), who deeply impresses with his creation of beautiful images filled with light. Mr. Williams would be pleased.