Living, the movie is a genteel, inspiring film that shows even the smallest life can leave the greatest impression. Perhaps the most powerful amongst Bill Nighy’s vast legacy of movies. A genteel beauty.
Set in the 1950’s we enter the bureaucratic world of a country Public Works department. Central to this genteel world is Rodney Williams (Bill Nighy), his conservative, buttoned down suit blending into the rest of the environment. He all but disappears into the office furniture.
Most of the action takes place at Williams’ place of employment. A place where employees sit across from each other at a table stacked high with files. Strict rules, and years of unspoken etiquette dictates a formality long gone in current businesses. Thankfully so too the workplace smoking.
One day Williams leaves work to visit his doctor to hear the results of some recent tests. The results are the kind no one wants to hear. A fatal illness has taken hold. While not a young man, what’s left of his future has been taken from him. What to do with the remaining months?
Leaving the home he shares with his distant adult son and daughter-in-law, he journeys south the seaside and is befriended by a local who shows him the other side of life.
On his return to London he sees his young female colleague (Aimee Lou Wood) in a different light. Her love of life reminds him of the exuberance of youth, his youth.
Nighy plays the self contained, emotionless Williams perfectly, but let’s be honest, we expect no less. Living touches on what it is to truly be alive even just for one day and what makes a life meaningful. The movie also touches on the class, friendship, gossip, love and how little we know about our colleagues who we spend so much of our time with.
As I, like most of the audience, sat quietly as the lights came up I pondered:
- Do you really need a huge monument to signify your worth. Surely if you touch one person that’s enough?
- The parallels between Williams’s final gift and Nighy’s own declining years makes the movie all the more powerful. While I dearly hope Nighy has many more movies to come, you can’t help but ponder what a fitting legacy this movie would be;
- How much do we really know about the people we work alongside day in day out?;
- I thought The Whale was going to be the best movie I’d see this year, but now Living has taken its place. Two magnificent movies, both reminding us that the story is king.
For more information go to Luna Cinema Starts March 16th.
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