Living

It’s a welcomed boost for your Film’s ratings when the starring role garners plaudits of a ‘career high performance’, but when that Actor is Bill Nighy, it becomes something altogether different. Directed by Oliver Hermanus and Screenplay from Kazuo Ishiguro, Living is a well-crafted and thought-provoking British period Drama set in early 1950s London.

If nothing else, Hermanus deserves credit for his audacity to reinterpret a revered film originally made in 1952 and in-turn inspired from a Leo Tolstoy story. In its simplest form, the film centres around Mr. Williams (Nighy), a well respected Bureaucrat and department head at London’s County Hall.

It opens with new recruit, Mr. Wakeling, scrabbling his way onto a busy commuter Train platform in suburban Surrey to meet his peers and Williams, who all take the same train. Whilst his uniform of Pinstripe Suit and Bowler Hat blends in, his enthusiasm for ‘hoping to make a difference’ doesn’t, and is promptly informed that a simple ‘good morning’ will suffice.

Mr Williams, who sits at the helm of the office, is about to give Mr. Wakeling his first insight of civil servant Bureaucracy when an officer informs him ‘the ladies’ are in reception expecting his department to resolve a protracted application to convert a derelict yard into a children’s playground. Williams attempt to bat it away elsewhere fails and concedes the file ‘will do no harm resting with us for now’ in the already overflowing in-tray, an essential asset according to the irreverent Miss Harris, as she explains how things work to Mr Wakeling. However the trio of tenacious Women from East London, won’t be fobbed off so easily and there’s a sense this will recur at some stage.

There’s a departure from the film’s orderly routine, triggered when Williams has a realisation that time is more precious than he thought. We see him ponder his past: his wife’s untimely passing and his Soldier Son returning from battle. Our protagonist embarks on an unpredicted trip to the coast where he meets Mr Sutherland, small-time Film Director played by Tom Burke, resulting in a boozy, hedonistic night out and a rendition of The Rogan Tree. Nighy’s voice is both highly listenable and inflected with sadness.

But it’s on his return to London and a chance meeting with Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood) , he determines a more purposeful course for his life. They begin a platonic friendship: lunch, the movies and Nighy’s character talks of why a child’s spirit should never be crushed stating ‘Children are often contrary when told to come in from playing, that’s how it should be, you never want to be the child waiting to be called in’.

Asides Nighy’s stellar performance, if you had to drop a pin on why this Film rates so highly it’s found in the well paced, tightly-scripted structure which is no better conveyed than the in the final act, set in the commuter train carriage. The delightful music score comes courtesy of Emile Levienaise-Rouch and a reprisal of the Scottish folk song to closing credits.