 102mins ★★★☆☆ WHAT would you do if you only had months to live? This is the predicament in which Mr Williams (Bill Nighy) finds himself in this gentle and smart film. Living is a tender and considerate film featuring an exquisite performance from Bill NighyCredit: Alamy Set in 1950s London, it focuses on the monotonous life of a man who is capable of so much more, but repressed by routine and society's expectations. Mr Williams is a man set in his ways. As a child he longed to join the gentlemen at the train station in their suits and hats, going to their office jobs in the capital and generally being respectable. But now an older man, he looks back on his life and realises it's been full of paper pushing and bureaucracy — and lacking in joy. Having been widowed, Mr Williams lives with his son and his soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Neither of them seem to care about him much and they have plate-scraping dinners together where important conversations go unspoken. At his office, new young worker Peter (played beautifully by Alex Sharp) exposes the lack of life and optimism among the rest of the staff, who are mostly chain-smoking men in suits shifting through piles of papers. Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood) sticks out, though. She is about to leave her job at the government-run office to work in a local restaurant, and both Mr Williams and Peter recognise her zest for life. They are attracted to her in their different ways: Peter romantically and Mr Williams as a student of how to live in the present. This simple story, directed by Oliver Hermanus, is adapted from the Japanese film Ikiru, which was inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novel The Death Of Ivan Ilyich. Nighy is exquisite as a man who suddenly has to live each day as if it's his last. This does not mean he is jumping from planes. Rather, he is having afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason instead of going into work. Yet he grows in warmth and empathy and realises it's better to do something that){kind=link}
(12A) 102mins
WHAT would you do if you only had months to live?
This is the predicament in which Mr Williams (Bill Nighy) finds himself in this gentle and smart film.
Set in 1950s London, it focuses on the monotonous life of a man who is capable of so much more, but repressed by routine and society’s expectations.
Mr Williams is a man set in his ways.