Living (2022)

Living is a movie out of time.  It takes place in the distant past of London in the 1950's.  Bill Nighy plays Rodney Williams a British civil service who receives a grim diagnosis, which changes his view on everything.  The one thing he questions is if he has lived a good life.  A life rich in experience and friends, and he comes to the conclusion that he hasn't and that change can happen, and redemption is possible.

Bill Nighy is fantastic in the part, and he gives a quiet performance in this movie.  We are thrust into the characters dilemma early in the movie and the director Oliver Hermanus doesn't waste anytime in getting us familiar with the characters of the film.  I have always liked Bill Nighy's performances no matter what movie he is in.  He does a wonderful haunting performance of Rodney Williams.  

The film makes you feel the monotony of Rodney routine.  It is his diagnosis that tips him into the so called pool of life & as he comes to terms with it he tries desperately to experience what he has missed in life.  He tries to tell his son Michael (Barney Fishwick) & his fiance (Patsy Ferranfails) but instead we see that all that they're interested in is their life and Rodney's son inheritance.  Rodney does tell Margret (Aimee Lou Wood) about his diagnosis & why he cannot tell his son.  Margret is the soul female in the group at work.  Rodney is drawn by Margret's honesty and her youthfulness.  There is nothing sexual about it, yet later it is presumed so and scolded as an old mans fantasy & an embarrassment to the family name.  Bill Nighy plays Rodney desperate to know what he's missed and through Margret's reactions & her honesty he learns about what he had been missing. Before this all transpires Rodney takes a holiday to a seaside town in order to see and what he has lost.  He does what I would think all of us would do and just doesn't come into work.  He gets drunk, and meets Middleton (Adrian Rawlins) a man who he confides in on his Nighy masterfully shows the characters layers peel off.   You feel the characters regrets and sadness, and we see how it is to live with risk and in someway be invigorated by it.  Rodney gets drunk and has a night of discovery in which he sheds his conservative and regimented lifestyle. Yet it is Margret that touches him and makes him look at life differently.  He tells her that it was always his dream to be "one of those gentlemen" who he admired as a child as they all went to work in the big city.  Williams is a widow and not much is said about his wife, yet you get the feeling that she was his star.  That his wife was the joy and when she passed the color of life drained from his life.  Nighy does this all and somehow we feel it.  He cannot explain why and how it all got away from him, but like life it has a tendency to drone on when we loose something we love.  We are also privy to watching a new young hire Peter (Alex Sharp) being taken under Rodney's wing and how he shows the young man what can and cannot be done.  It is only when Rodney takes on the problem of getting a neighborhood playground built, upon request by local ladies that invigorates him.  We see how the bureaucracy in local affairs can have a tendency to grind down people and workers.  The bureaucracy is something that seems to have been a model in Rodney's life and it has made him become a bureaucrat with no feelings.  Somehow Nighy performance is the key, and we see how he himself takes on the bureaucracy.  He is a man on a mission and he has little time.  He concentrates all his being into creating this playground and in the end it is what makes him happy.  Bill Nighy's is brilliant in his performance and something that the Academy seems to have noticed.  Nighy is up for an Oscar and it is my deepest wish that he gets it, but knowing the Academy I'm sure they will.   The screenplay is by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro  writer of the film "The Remains of the Day", which was also nominated for best screenplay and rightfully so.  The screenplay raises a lot of universal questions about the end of life, and because it does so with such slow tempo it is a masterpiece to watch.  

It is Oliver Hermanus direction that is spot on and makes the film believable, and meaningful.It is Nighy's performance that hits it home and it is so well done.  It is a sad tale, yet we see how Nighy's character teach the young Alex about life and we get to see a relationship between Margret and him grow, and it is like a parallel universe where we see Alex make the right decisions to lead a happy life.  In a way the film shows us how to lead a good and loving life and to never take it for granted.  The films cinematography (Jamie Ramsay) is stark and yet poignant as it shows the day to day minutia of a bureaucrat.  The darks are dark and the landscape is stark.  The movie begins with some archival footage of 1953 and the film sort of mimics that era. It's quite absorbing and it lends the film a bit of authenticity.  James Ramsay does a superb job at getting the era right and making us feel as though it were a documentary form the past.The film moves slowly and that's okay.  Nighy's performance of his character realizing his mortality does not feel forced or at all telegraphed.  It is this performance that sells the film.  I was touched and moved by the film.  I hope this film is not lost to the public because of its select distribution, but I do think it is a treasure to behold and one that has some meaning.  I can only hope that maybe by its nomination by the Academy that it will get some notice and more people will discover it.

I have to say something about the cinematography of the movie or I would never forgive myself.  “Living” sets the tone early on with an opening-titles sequence full of archival footage that places the audience in 1953".*  The cinematographer  Jamie D. Ramsay seems to combine the period archival footage into the film itself and it blends so nicely.  It feels as though it were shot in the 1950's and was illuminated with the lighting fixtures of that period.  It helps the viewer get involved in the story and almost makes you feel as though you were watching a documentary, yet the images are crisp and well defined.  The cinematography sets the mood of the film and gives its characters the room to escape into the period of which it is set.   It is a delightful film and one I hope more people see.

* Taken from the following article by Jason Clark for The Wrap