“I wonder if you ever stop on the way home and watch the children playing. In the street, or in the yard. And when the time comes and their mothers call them in, they’re often reluctant. They … they get a little contrary. But that’s as it should be. Far better than to be the child you occasionally see, he’s sitting by himself in the corner not taking part, not happy, not unhappy. Merely waiting for his mother to call him in. I’ve become afraid that I might end up like that child. And I so very much do not wish to do so.”
I love Bill Nighy. It doesn’t matter if he’s doing roles covered in makeup like Underworld and Pirates Of The Caribbean, or he’s doing heartfelt characters like About Time. There is something quite authentic about any role he plays. He manages to suppress Bill Nighy and deliver a fully formed character. He’s always compelling, and that hasn’t changed with his latest film, Living. The film was adapted from a 1952 Japanese film Ikiru written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The English-language screenplay was adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro, who had long wanted to adapt the film for English audiences. The result is quite the character study.
The film opens like an old BBC television documentary with grainy shots of 1950’s London. Then we shift to Peter Wakeling (Sharp), who is about to begin his first day at an accounting division of the 1950’s London bureaucracy. His expectations are soon dashed when he meets some of his colleagues on the train to the city and more so when he meets the head of their division, Mr. Williams (Nighy), who displays a stoic attitude and quickly demonstrates that emotional displays have no place here in the workplace. While we are introduced to this environment by the young, idealistic Peter, the focus soon shifts to Mr. Williams, who shocks his workers by announcing he’ll be leaving early. Not something he has apparently ever done before. He has a doctor appointment where he learns he has a terminal condition and about six months to live.
The diagnosis sends him into a bit of an introspective mood. He goes home where his son and daughter-in-law live and tries to tell them several times, only to be ignored. He soon realizes that he hasn’t really made any connections in life even with his limited family. The next day he does something no one in his circle suspected possible. He doesn’t show up for work. He walks about numb but goes to a seaside vacation spot only to find he doesn’t know how to enjoy anything. Even with the help of a local poet and partier, he continues to feel numb. He continues to miss work, now fixating on a young woman who briefly worked under him at the office but left for presumed better pastures. Peggy (Wood) appears to represent that part of himself that he’s trying to awaken before he dies. What she does awaken in him is the knowledge that he could actually make a difference at his job, where he was used to passing papers and responsibility from one department back to another.
He returns to work and greets his employees with a bit more life than they’ve seen before. There have been a group of ladies trying to get a dump site turned into a playground for the kids. We have seen them earlier passed along from one place to the next until finally their petition is shelved. Now Williams has a purpose. He uncharacteristically fights with his superiors to get the playground built. He goes from one refusal to another, now experiencing firsthand what he had done to people for 30 years. In the end he gets the playground built, and the story comes to a rather abrupt end, as does Mr. Williams.
The performance is compelling. Nighy understates his usual rather terse speaking pattern, and here it is softened considerably. Still, he manages to show these changes in a character with little else to work with. The reactions of those around him offer a unique perspective, but unlike them we see how and why he changes. I was disappointed in an end that quickly jumps to his death. I think I would have liked to have seen how this epiphany changed his family relationship and his life in general. We’re denied that aspect of the story. It ends with a bittersweet exchange between Wakeling and a police officer during a cold night at the finished playground.
I have not seen the Japanese original film. I’m told this is a close and faithful adaptation. I find it hard to believe it had an actor as good as Bill Nighy to deliver these character changes in such a convincing way. I might happen upon it one day, and I’ll try to keep an open mind, but it’s going to have to be pretty good to best Living. Either way, remakes can be quite good. This one certainly is. “Let’s pledge to learn from his example.”
