Bill Nighy achieves a kind of Zen minimalist transcendence in Living, trading his usual twinkle-eyed comic charm for a graceful, pared-down, internalised performance that says a lot with very little. World premiering this week at Sundance Film Festival, this finely crafted remake of Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s philosophical 1952 drama Ikiru transposes the story to post-war London, but remains emotionally and psychologically faithful to its blueprint, with mostly fruitful results.
Combining the talents of South African director Oliver Hermanus (The Endless River, Moffie), British novelist-screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go) and veteran Brit film producer Stephen Woolley (The Crying Game, Interview with The Vampire, Carol), Living wears its classy pedigree lightly but stylishly. Sombre without being portentous, this is a quietly powerful meditation on the meaning of life in the shadow of death.
Living feels like a natural fit for Ishiguro, partly because it draws on his Japanese family heritage but mainly because it returns him to the starchy, class-stifled, emotionally repressed post-war Britain of his Booker prize-winning 1989 novel The Remains of the Day, which became a feted Merchant-Ivory film in 1993. The action takes place in early 1950s London, the same time period as Kurosawa’s original film. This is an age of austerity and deference, bowler-hatted salarymen and buttoned-down feelings. This era has been widely explored in British cinema, usually with either reactionary nostalgia or affectionate mockery. But Ishiguro and Hermanus view the period through refreshingly unsentimental eyes, prodding at the deep psychic wounds that lie below stiff upper lips and passive-aggressive politeness.
Nighy plays Williams, an upper-level civil servant at County Hall, the imposing landmark on the south bank of the Thames that served as London’s local government headquarters for most of the 20th century. An emotionally withdrawn widower, Williams is existing rather than living, but he masks his ossified soul behind icily impeccable manners. The latest recruit to his team of fawning office minions is idealistic rookie Peter (Alex Sharp), who slowly comes to realise that the true purpose of the office is to maintain the sclerotic status quo by perpetually passing the buck and quietly stalling costly public works projects.
Shaken out of his slumber by a grave medical diagnosis, Williams is suddenly forced to reckon with his own looming mortality. Following a failed attempt to break the news to his self-absorbed son and daughter-in-law, he take a solo trip to a coastal town outside London, apparently with suicide in mind. But instead he finds temporary solace through a chance encounter with a bohemian writer, played by Tom Burke in a brief but enjoyably colourful cameo. Swapping his formal bowler hat for a more dandyish alternative, Williams closes a night of louche carousing with a boozy rendition of an antique Scottish folk song, Oh Rowan Tree, only to run dry midway through in a scene that aches with melancholy. Williams makes fondly nostalgic reference to his Scottish mother, a family detail that Nighy shares in real life, and he could almost be channeling authentically autobiographical emotions here.
Returning to London, Williams runs into one of his former junior co-workers, Margaret (Sex Education co-star Aimee Lou Wood on grand form), a frank young woman with little patience for formal manners or office politics. Williams invites her on a series of innocent daytime dates, setting tongues wagging with scandalous gossip . But his interest in Margaret is not sexual, nor even conventionally romantic. He just wants to learn from her how to live with such joyous freedom. “If only to be alive like that for one day,” he sighs.
Ultimately, Margaret does help Williams break out of his permafrost shell and secure a small legacy of kindness in his final months. Following his death, his devoted employees vow to follow his inspirational example, but most of them soon drift back towards the safe ground of conformity. Only Peter appears eager to carry this humanist spirit forward, paying homage to his late boss in a lyrical snowscape finale lifted directly from Kurosawa’s original. Invoking the luminous working-class poetry of film-maker Terence Davies in his prime, this tender scene packs a powerful kick.
Echoing Kurosawa’s original, Living initially follows a linear structure but breaks down midway through, marking the hero’s physical death and spiritual rebirth. In lesser hands, the story of an emotionally deep-frozen old man finally learning the right way to live just as he is dying could have lapsed into sentimental cliché. Hermanus and Ishiguro thankfully keep feelgood sunshine in check, hymning the modest virtues of kindness, humility and post-war Welfare State collectivism without exaggerating their world-changing power.
In dramatic terms, Living is chiefly a glorious star vehicle for Nighy to show his unusually wintry, understated side, so inevitably the film’s bewitching spell fades a little when he is off screen. Sharp is a genial but fairly wan choice as Peter while his putative romance with Margaret, Ishiguro’s only significant departure from Kurosawa’s Ikiru, feels schematic and unconvincing. More screen time for Wood and Burke might have helped boost charisma levels.
As an aesthetic experience, Living is a retro design feast, from its archly nostalgic opening credits to Helen Scott’s sumptuous production design and veteran Oscar-winner Sandy Powell’s fastidiously accurate costumes. Smoothly incorporating archive London footage, Jamie Ramsay’s cinematography makes effective recurring use of meticulously composed profile shots and dreamlike detours into memory that artfully blur monochrome into colour. Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch’s perky orchestral score is leavened with light classical pieces and period-specific pop. But the real musical virtuoso here is Nighy, playing the space between the notes like an old-time jazz maestro.
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Screenwriter: Kazuo Ishiguro, based onIkiru by Akira Kurosawa
Producers: Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen
Cast: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Oliver Chris, Tom Burke, Michael Cochrane, Lia Williams
Cinematography: Jamie D. Ramsay
Editing: Chris Wyatt
Music: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
Production designer: Helen Scott
Costume designer: Sandy Powell
Production companies: Number 9 Films (UK), Ingenious Media (UK), Film4 Productions (UK)
World sales: Rocket science
In English
102 minutes
