Living
Starring Bill Nighy, directed by Oliver Hermanus
Rating: ****
Living is more about dying in peace. At least that’s what it seems like for our protagonist Rodney Williams played by Bill Nighy who is one of Britain’s finest actors who is himself lodged in the winter of his existence, just like the character he plays.
Nighy’s feeling of identification with his character Williams must have been extremely high. It shows in the way the character and the actor merge,seamlessly, without fuss .
Yes, Nighy owns his role. Which is half the battle won for South African director Oliver Hermanus who grew up in a state of isolation in his own country. Two of his most remarkable and haunting feature films Beauty and Moffie are about queer segregation .
Living is about isolation in one’s own community and family.Set in London and ensconced in bleakness it nonetheless keeps spirits high even as its protagonist’s flesh proves weak. It’s not that Williams’ son and daughter-in-law don’t care for him. It’s just that they want a life of their own apart from the patriarch.
Some early scenes showing Williams alone in the living room(living,get it?) while his son whispers with his wife in their bedroom , immediately establish Williams’ isolation in his immediate family.
Then comes the being medical revelation. Williams is dying. Remarkably there is no room for sentimentality in this portrait of a modern family tragedy . The bond that Williams forms with one of his bureaucratic junior colleagues Margaret(Aimee Lou Wood) is more Graham Greene than Leo Tolstoy.
Living written by one of Japan’s literary icons Kazuo Ishiguro, claims to be inspired by a short novel of Tolstoy,which it probably is . But the lonely Williams’ growing need tethering on desperation, to be with Margaret is very much an area occupied by Greene’s fiction, except that Williams’ loneliness doesn’t spread itself into any substantial loss to his dignity.
There is a memorable encounter after Williams’ death between his son and Margaret where the son wants to know how she knew about the old man’s terminal illness whilst the son didn’t. It’s not a question with any easy answers. Aimee Lou Wood’s silence says it all.
This is film that values understatement. It keeps mum when there is no need to talk.And yes, just because Bill Nighy is such a great actor, it doesn’t mean that the narrative relies blindly on him for efficacy.
Halfway through, Williams exits the plot. The rest of this gentle elegiacal film is about bringing Williams’ dream to fruition.Living ends with a montage of Williams on a children’s swing in a park singing a Scottish folk song ‘The Rowan Tree’ so feelingly that you wonder whom to congratulate for the performance: Nighy or Williams.
Declared as based on Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, there is flavor of Kurusawa’s Roshomon in the way Williams’ office colleague Wakeling(Alex Sharp) tries to piece together the dead man’s life. Really, it can’t get any more enigmatic , pragmatic and humanistic than this.
