Based on the 1952 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa Living is a
wonderful and moving story about the mundanity of life.
Set in London in the early 50s Bill Nighy plays Mr Williams, a civil
servant, who every working day travels on a train to Waterloo Station. He
then walks to County Hall where he is in charge of the planning department.
Finding out he has terminal cancer Mr Williams is forced to revaluate his
rather boring life and with only months to live abandons his work for a
while firstly travelling to Brighton where he enjoys a drunken night out
with an stranger who he meets in a café (Tom Burke).
Returning to London and unable to communicate with his son and his rather
over bearing wife, Mr William’s strikes up a rather inappropriate,
according to his son, but innocent relationship with a much younger former
colleague, Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood).
Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood are both terrific in their respective roles
and the attention to period detail is just one of the films many strong
points, director Oliver Hermanus uses a film ratio of 4:3 giving Living the
look of a film made in the period that it is set.
Living is a wonderful piece of cinema and comes highly recommended.
