Film Review: Living (2022) Dir. OLIVER HERMANUS
Film Still from Living (2022)
Written by Belle McIntyre
This story has quite an impressive lineage. Based on a Russian novella by Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich which inspired Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru (“To Live”), which he also wrote, this film takes place in 1950’s London. It is a character study of a seemingly ordinary man, Mr. Williams, played by the inimitable Bill Nighy, who is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Department of Public Works, a place of stultifying, soul-destroying conformity. As office manager overseeing a small staff of younger men and one young woman. He is so taciturn and reserved to the point of being dour and somewhat intimidating. Ironically all of these robotic bureaucrats are very busy looking busy while doing little more than shuffling papers.
As we are privy to the circumstances of his life, which is not terrible, just terribly boring. He commutes to work from his house in the suburbs where he lives with his chilly son and annoying daughter-in-law, and goes to the same job as countless others everyday in what looks like a parade of identically-dressed men in suits and bowler hats. Widowed for 30 years, he does not appear to have any life outside of work. The only break in the monotony for Mr. Williams is a diagnosis of advanced cancer and a prognosis of 6 to 8 months to live. Finally, the spell is broken. He begins to vary his routine little by little, in an attempt to explore the life he has left in him. He even takes time off from work without explanation and goes to the nearest seaside. There he meets a garrulous slightly dissolute novelist in a bar and opens up to him. The writer offers to show him the town and they go pub crawling and visit bawdy nightclubs. Poor Williams gets falling down drunk, taking revenge on 30 years of sober living.
Film Still from Living (2022)
When he returns to work and realizes the futility of everything he has been doing he makes a bold decision to make a worthy difference before he dies. He takes up one of the cases which had been brought to his department several times and ignored. It involves cleaning up a cesspool in one of the poor areas which is full of children and putting in a playground. He personally shepherds the project through the usual hurdles. He befriends a former female staffer and spends time enjoying himself. She is the only one who knows his condition and is sworn to secrecy. Soon after the playground is completed so is Williams life. It is at the funeral when all of the grateful mothers who had been petitioning for the playground came out en masse to show their gratitude, that the family and colleagues realize what he had done and why. His former staffers agree to honor him by changing their attitude and emulating what he had done so modestly.
This story is paced with such subtlety that it takes you by surprise by how moving it is. It must be said that Bill Nighy is a national treasure. Never less than dignified, his craggy features twinkle and his mouth can turn up so slightly that you aren’t always sure. He doesn’t give much away but he always delivers in spades. The cinematography is beautiful and art direction is very handsome. It is a simple unpretentious film but so very satisfying.
Film Still from Living (2022)
