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‘Living’ Review: Losing His Inhibition

Bill Nighy stars as a buttoned-up bureaucrat transformed by a grim diagnosis in this drama by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, adapted from an Akira Kurosawa movie.

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By Beatrice Loayza

There is a coziness to “Living,” despite the fact that it revolves around death. It’s not a holiday movie, at least not explicitly, but like “A Christmas Carol” and other Yuletide ghost stories, it’s a film that steps back to consider the rituals and routines we perpetuate, the ways we’ve changed since the last break. And the ways we haven’t.

“Living,” directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s drama “Ikiru” (or “To Live”). That Japanese classic from 1952 stars the great Takashi Shimura as a drab Tokyo functionary who learns he is terminally ill and begins to question his life.

Ishiguro has called “Ikiru” a formative work for him. His books (which include “Never Let Me Go” and “The Remains of the Day”) limn the crisis of confronting one’s own life with newfound clarity, of perceiving the ways in which it is fraught and one’s complicity in its corruption. With “Living,” Ishiguro — a British writer whose parents moved the family from Nagasaki to Surrey when he was five — infuses his beloved parable with nostalgia closer to home.

“Living” transposes “Ikiru” to a gloomy postwar London filled with buttoned-up men of dignity; bowler-hat-wearing worker bees who commute in and out of the city with the solemn demeanor of churchgoers. One of them is Williams (Bill Nighy), a cadaverous bureaucrat and the intimidatingly austere head of the Public Works Department. The film opens on a new hire’s first day, but the young man’s illusions are quickly dashed when his new boss, a total gentleman at first glance, proves to be an inert leader. A group of women with a petition asking for the construction of a new playground are kicked around the building — this is under that department’s jurisdiction, no, that one — because no one wants the hassle.

Thinking of Nighy and holiday releases, Williams is the total inverse of Billy Mack, the washed-up rocker whom Nighy played in “Love Actually.” Where Mack is lovably sleazy, the creaky Williams is inhibition personified. The chipper Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), the sole female employee of Williams’s wing, calls him “Mr. Zombie.”

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‘living’: film review.

The Kazuo Ishiguro-scripted remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Ikiru' stars Bill Nighy as a British civil servant who searches for meaning after being diagnosed with a terminal illness.

By Angie Han

Television Critic

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Remakes frequently face a double-edged sword: If a movie is beloved enough to warrant making again, there’s a decent chance it’s also beloved enough to cast a shadow so long that even a perfectly nice re-do might struggle to escape it.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premieres) Cast: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke Director: Oliver Hermanus Screenwriter: Kazuo Ishiguro, based on the film  Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa

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What finally jolts him out of his deadening routine is the imminence of actual death. Informed by his doctor that he has only six months left to live, he grasps for some way to make his limited time count — by losing himself in hedonistic pleasures with the help of a hard-drinking but generous stranger (Tom Burke), by attaching himself to an upbeat younger colleague (Aimee Lou Wood), and ultimately by finding purpose in a minor but meaningful public works project.

Nighy shrinks his typically vivid presence until even his spare frame feels too expansive for Williams’ meager personality. As Williams warms to life, Nighy projects a gentle glow rather than a roaring fire. Those around him may act a bit more assertively, but they hardly make more of an impression. His coworkers at the government office, including well-meaning newcomer Mr. Wakeling (Alex Sharp), are dwarfed by the piles of paperwork around them — purposely kept high lest “people suspect you of not having anything very important to do,” as Wood’s Miss Harris slyly notes.

The sense of repression is heightened by the film’s self-consciously old-fashioned look, which asserts itself from the opening credits — the grainy texture and elegant score mimic midcentury films so effectively that you might wonder for a moment if you’ve stepped into the wrong theater, or clicked on the wrong title. The predominating tone of Living is one of dignified restraint, in Mr. Williams’ case to the point of self-erasure. In a gut-wrenching detail, on the rare occasions that Williams works up the courage to reveal his diagnosis with someone, he still can’t help prefacing it with “It’s rather a bore, but …”

But it’s also a trick that’s been done before. While Williams spends his time haunted by his dwindling future, Living is dogged by a long past. It’s obviously distinct from Ikiru . Ishiguro has made changes to the script, including a light romantic subplot for the female lead. Hermanus’ tasteful colors and crisp lines could never be mistaken for the black-and-white messiness of Kurosawa’s. Nighy stiffens where Takashi Shimura sagged, withdraws where Shimura seemed to break himself open.

What fundamentally works about Living , though, is what worked about Ikiru , minus the surprise of discovery: the poignant premise, the unusual structure, the sardonic observations of office work and the aching compassion for a man barely in touch with his own sense of self. At the end of Living , I felt not like I’d seen an old favorite in a new light, but like I might want to go back and watch Ikiru again. There are worse outcomes for a remake than reviving affection for the original, or retelling an old story for a new audience that may not have heard it before. There are better ones, too.

Full credits

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premieres) Production companies: Film4, Cast: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke Director: Oliver Hermanus Screenwriter: Kazuo Ishiguro, based on the film  Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa Producers: Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen Cinematographer: Jamie D. Ramsay Production designer: Helen Scott Costume designer: Sandy Powell Editor: Chris Wyatt Composer: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch Casting director: Kathleen Crawford Sales: Rocket Science

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Review: If you doubted the greatness of Bill Nighy, a moving new drama offers ‘Living’ proof

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Not long into “Living,” Mr. Williams learns that he has not long to live. The news doesn’t come as a huge shock, but even if it did, you gather, nothing about this man — not his stiff posture, his calmly appraising gaze or his thin, flat line of a mouth — would betray anything resembling devastation or even surprise. We are in 1950s London, and Mr. Williams, who’s spent more than two decades toiling away in the county hall’s Public Works department, has encased himself in a shell of propriety, receiving every new document and file with unfailing politeness and unflappable calm. Why should his response to his own demise — in six months to a year, max — be any different?

Here it should be noted that Mr. Williams is played by Bill Nighy, for whom a show of restraint is never just a show of restraint. Within emotional parameters that other actors might have found gloomily constricting, Nighy coaxes forth a tour de force of understatement, suffused with an almost musical melancholy. His performance, which won a lead acting prize from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. earlier this month, is a gorgeous minor-key symphony of downcast gazes and soft-spoken pronouncements, lightened occasionally by a faint little ghost of a smile. There’s a whisper of humor to Mr. Williams, a sense of irony about a death sentence that he keeps secret from all but a trusted few. In the movie’s best moments, Nighy lures you into the impression that he’s sharing a private joke with you, a glimmer of comic insight into an unbearably sad situation.

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At one point you might flash back to “Love Actually,” specifically a line from one of Nighy’s funniest, most famous performances : “And now I’m left with no one, wrinkled and alone!” But Mr. Williams is not one for flamboyant self-pity, and “Living,” thankfully, will never be mistaken for “Life Actually.” Exquisitely directed by Oliver Hermanus from a spare, elegant script by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the movie is a faithful English-language reimagining of “Ikiru,” Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film about a Tokyo widower who receives a terminal stomach-cancer diagnosis and turns over a startling new leaf.

An emotional epic situated between more sweeping Kurosawa classics (it was made after “Rashomon” and right before “Seven Samurai” ), “Ikiru” remains sufficiently revered that the mere thought of a remake might draw cries of sacrilege. But it is also, like so many of Kurosawa’s films, a culturally permeable, infinitely adaptable story. (“Ikiru” itself was loosely drawn from Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”) Its lessons about the finity of existence and the beauty of living for the good of others are nothing if not universally applicable, something that could also be said of its withering indictment of government bureaucracy.

In “Living,” that bureaucracy has been transplanted to postwar London and visualized as a sea of gray pinstripe suits and bowler hats, flowing through wood-paneled offices and up and down marbled stairwells. It’s an almost distractingly beautiful vision of workplace tedium, thanks to the impeccable cut of Sandy Powell’s costumes, the polish of Helen Scott’s production design and the deep colors and sharply planed images of Jamie Ramsay’s cinematography. Our first impressions of the place, and of Mr. Williams himself, come by way of a new Public Works hire, Peter Wakeling (an excellent Alex Sharp). His cheery disposition and idealistic spirit are swiftly tempered by the realization of what their work, if that’s the word, entails.

The building is a well-ordered monument to inefficiency, where papers are duly stored and shuffled around, and anyone in need of personal assistance is immediately referred to the next department over. The satire of public administration is much the same as it was in “Ikiru,” down to the series of wipes used here (by editor Chris Wyatt) to follow a group of women on their fruitless, frustrating quest to convert a bomb site into a children’s playground. But Ishiguro has also streamlined the material and sanded down some of its rougher edges, in keeping with a sensibility that feels governed by a quintessentially (or perhaps just stereotypically) English reserve. In “Ikiru,” a doctor lies to his terminally ill patients, claiming they only have an ulcer; in “Living,” bad news is delivered and processed with the stiffest of upper lips.

That makes for a trimmer narrative (40 minutes shorter than the original), if also one that, for those who’ve seen “Ikiru,” might feel a touch muffled and overly circumscribed as it sends Mr. Williams off in search of existential answers. Away he goes from the office where he has never missed a day’s work until now, with nary a word to his colleagues or to his unsuspecting, self-absorbed son (Barney Fishwick) and daughter-in-law (Patsy Ferran). His chance encounter with a worldly pleasure seeker (Tom Burke) is diverting enough, though their guided tour of arcades and nightclubs has been conspicuously denuded of suspense or menace. More affecting are Mr. Williams’ moments with a soon-to-be-former colleague, Margaret Harris (a delightful Aimee Lou Wood), whose warmth and good humor make her an ideal if accidental confidant.

Their tender rapport is one of the story’s pleasures — a reminder that the gradual forging of a bond between near-strangers, truthful and unhurried, can be one of the simplest and most powerful things to witness in a movie. Their meetings also never rise above a polite simmer, which is true of nearly everything that transpires in “Living,” death included. In “Ikiru,” the great Takashi Shimura externalized his character’s desperation with enormous, wide-open eyes and a drooping stare. Nighy forges something more mysterious, almost subterranean, from Mr. Williams’ crisis and sudden reawakening.

That might make the movie sound more anemic than it plays, as if it were a story about the meaning of life with barely enough life surging through its own veins. But if “Living” never matches — or tries to match — the grit and density of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, it knows that detachment can be deceptive, that it can conceal profound and resonant depths of feeling. Ishiguro, who knows a thing or two about the subtle braiding of Japanese and English sensibilities, has mastered the art of such concealment in his own fiction, notably his famously filmed novel “The Remains of the Day.” Hermanus, a South African filmmaker known for his tense and powerful dramas of gay desire (“Beauty,” “Moffie” ), has similar form when it comes to dramatizing repression.

Their economy comes to fruition in the third act of “Living,” which shrewdly restructures the story’s closing scenes with no loss of impact, and with an assertion of its own singular identity. That’s to the good of a movie that knows Mr. Williams’ example is somehow both admirable and inimitable, that the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary one can only be measured within a set of specific, unrepeatable circumstances. It’s only human to pretend we would behave as our heroes would, and no less human to long to see and hear their stories retold.

Rated: PG-13, for some suggestive material and smoking Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 23 at Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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‘Living’ Is Bill Nighy’s Finest Hour, and Worthy of Oscar Love

By David Fear

From the moment the opening credits start rolling over an overhead view of London’s Piccadilly Square, in all of its mid-20th century glory, Oliver Hermanus’ Living whisks you into a bygone era of Britain. Or, to be more specific, a lost heyday of British cinema, when names like Powell and Pressburger were synonymous with vibrancy and verve, Ealing comedies sold a vision of postwar England that prized both stiff upper lips and smirks, and movies like Brief Encounter pitted emotional repression against raging passion. The vintage font, the slightly washed tint of the color, the old-school score by the London contemporary orchestra — there are few moments where you wonder if this movie might have been recently discovered gathering dust in a vault, some lost masterpiece that even predates its source material.

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And it’s the star himself who, even more than the decor and the change of cultural scenery, lifts Living out of the realm of a remake and into something far more profound. It becomes another story of a man at long last learning how to embrace the world, yet one that is completely substantial and shattering and, yeah, even life-affirming on its own. The performance lifts it above and beyond. By the time the movie pays homage by replicating Ikiru ’s most famous shot of an old man on a swing, totally alive for the first time, Nighy makes you feel like the nod is earned. It’s a testament to the power of one “small” man, doing one “small” thing that will benefit those he leaves behind. And, even more strikingly, to the talent of one giant actor, turning something dialed down to less into something so very much more.

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Sleekly sentimental, 'Living' plays like an 'Afterschool Special' for grownups

John Powers

Bill Nighy plays a bottled-up bureaucrat who embarks on a quest for meaning in Living . Sony Pictures hide caption

Bill Nighy plays a bottled-up bureaucrat who embarks on a quest for meaning in Living .

When historians look back on the COVID-19 years, they'll be struck by how those many months of anxiety and social distancing led countless people to ask themselves big existential questions: Have I been doing the work I really want to do? Have I been living the way I really want to live? Or have I been simply coasting as my life passes by?

These questions lie at the heart of Oliver Hermanus' Living , a sleekly sentimental new British drama adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro from Akira Kurosawa's classic 1952 film Ikiru , which means "to live" in Japanese. Starring the great Bill Nighy , it tells the story of a bottled-up bureaucrat in 1950s London who's led to examine the way he's spent the last 30 years of his life.

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Nighy plays Mr. Williams, a widower in charge of a local government department that approves public projects like parks for children, a Kafkaesque system in which nothing ever gets done. Trapped in bowler-hatted, besuited monotony, the all-but silent Mr. Williams is sleepwalking through life until, one day, his doctor gives him a death sentence. This rouses him from his lethargy, and sends him off on a quest for meaning.

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Actor bill nighy on the movie 'living'.

At a seaside resort he meets a local novelist — that's Tom Burke, of Strike fame — who takes him out carousing. But that's not what he needs. Then he grows obsessed with his only female employee — played by chipper Aimee Lou Wood — whose appeal is not her sexuality but an effortless, upbeat vitality that's a counterpoint to his quietness. Her nickname for Mr. Williams is "Mr. Zombie," a moniker whose justice he doesn't deny. Her embrace of life inspires him to redeem his remaining days by doing good works. Everybody in the theater can predict whether or not he'll succeed — we've seen this story before, indeed Ikiru set the template — yet his fate is touching, anyway.

Now, there's a lot of skill on display in Living . From Mr. Williams' suits, to the nifty décor, to the font in the credits, 1950s London is lovingly recreated in a way that had my screening companions cooing with delight. And who doesn't love Nighy? Although he's better, I think, when he's more fun, his quiet, deeply internal performance captures a man who, with grace and bone-dry humor, peels off his mummy's bandages and comes alive.

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So given all this, why do I find the film disappointing? It's not simply that it's a remake and I'm a stickler for originality. Heck, Ikiru itself was inspired by Tolstoy's great 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich .

But when Kurosawa made his film, he didn't tell exactly the same story as Tolstoy and didn't simply move it from 1880s St Petersburg to 1880s Tokyo. He reconceived the plot and set the action at the time he was living, a 1950s Tokyo still ravaged by World War II. Though it tells a universal story about finding meaning in the face of death, Kurosawa's film crackles with the urgency of its historical moment, which in Japan's era of rebuilding, had a desperate need to believe that even the most ordinary person — a paper-pusher — had the capacity for heroism and nobility.

Alas, Ishiguro's adaptation lacks the same inventiveness and urgency. It seems more like a deftly edited transposition than the artistic rethinking I expected from a Nobel prize winner whose fiction I admire. Rather than retool things for the present, the film sinks into Britain's boundless obsession with its past.

Dwelling on period details, Living feels distant from the textures of today's fast-paced, Brexit -battered, multicultural London where a 2022 Mr. Williams might well be of East Asian or Caribbean descent. The messiness of life never busts in. As with too many British dramas, the action takes place in a safely-stylized England, a museum diorama in which even life and death can't really touch us. Low-key and muted, Hermanus' direction doesn't catch the desperation and sadness that gave Kurosawa's original film its emotional power, especially in its transcendent finale set in the snow, one of the most beautiful and moving climaxes in movie history.

Rather than shake us to our core like Ikiru , Living teaches us a life lesson we can all agree on. It's like an Afterschool Special for grownups — a very good one, mind you. But still.

‘Living’ Review: Less Is More in This Exceptionally Understated Turn From Bill Nighy

The charismatic English actor dials it back in this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s meaning-of-life classic 'Ikiru,' adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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“What would you do if you had six months left to live?” asks the doctor who diagnoses a do-nothing bureaucrat with terminal cancer in “Ikiru,” a 1952 masterpiece I suspect precious few of those who see its English-language remake, “ Living ,” will recall. Quite unlike anything else in Akira Kurosawa’s career, “Ikiru” ranks among the Japanese director’s best: With no samurai battles or set-pieces, the low-key contemporary melodrama raises profound questions about how we choose to spend the limited time we’re afforded, focusing on a stoic functionary about whom even the narrator apologizes, “He might as well be a corpse.”

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Nighy’s career has enjoyed an almost two-decade second act, and it’s possible to imagine the BAFTA winner scooping up a fresh shelf of trophies for this performance. “Living” is undeniably moving, although perhaps not to the same degree that Kurosawa achieved, in part because Ishiguro is so committed to the British art of biting one’s tongue and swallowing one’s emotions. That is to say, Ishiguro has aligned “Ikiru” with his best-known work, “The Remains of the Day.” That book — whose title alludes to what time we have left — concerned a butler so committed to his post that he allowed the love of his life to slip him by.

“Living” introduces Mr. Williams through the eyes of a new hire, Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp), as yet uncorrupted by the office’s practiced art of dodging responsibility. With their neatly tailored suits and matching bowler hats, the paper pushers in Public Works seem to have realized that sticking their necks out is the surest way to lose their heads — initiative endangers their jobs — and so, they spend their days referring cases to other departments. The goal, while hardly Hippocratic, is to “do no harm.” The result is that they do no good either.

In Peter, Mr. Williams recognizes a younger version of himself. This character, invented by Ishiguro, lends a Dickensian dimension to the retelling: Mr. Williams is hardly as selfish as Ebenezer Scrooge, but like the old miser of “A Christmas Carol,” he’s squandered his days. Too oblivious to know what he doesn’t know, Peter provides Mr. Williams with a unique opportunity to pass on what he realized too late. Similarly, a young employee who’d left the office before it could crush her, Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), suggests the kind of woman he probably ought to have married.

Mr. Williams does have a son, Michael (Barney Fishwick), but he can’t bring himself to tell the lad about his diagnosis — and besides, he and his girlfriend Fiona (Patsy Ferran) act as if he’s already dead. They’re already making plans for their inheritance. But who can blame them? As Margaret points out, Mr. Williams goes through life like a zombie. And so the dying man keeps the news to himself, withdrawing half his savings and heading to the seaside, where he intends to cram some fun into his final days. In what could easily be the film’s most pathetic line, Mr. Williams winces when a stranger (Tom Burke) tells him to “live a little,” confessing, “I don’t know how.”

Building a playground won’t change the world. But it will change Mr. Williams. When he dies (surprisingly early in the film), his family and co-workers are left to wonder why this project should have meant so much to him. We know more than they do, of course. Though it stacks endings upon endings in an effort to wring tears, the film is wise to leave some things unanswered. “Living” isn’t nearly as subtle as it purports to be, although it can feel that way, considering how much these characters hold back — and this, one supposes, is what audiences want from an Ishiguro script.

Reviewed online, Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. 21, 2022. Running time: 102 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A Film 4, County Hall Arts presentation, in association with Lip Sync, Rocket Science, Kurosawa Prod. of a Woolley/Karlsen, Number 9 Films production, in co-production with Filmgate Films, Film i Väst. (World sales: Rocket Science, London; CAA Media Finance, Los Angeles.) Producers: Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen. Executive producers: Norman Merry, Peter Hampden, Sean Wheelan, Thorsten Schumacher, Emma Berkofsky, Ko Kurosawa, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nik Powell, Kenzo Okamoto, Ian Prior. Co-executive producer: Kristina Börjenson. Co-producer: Jane Hooks.
• Crew: Director: Oliver Hermanus. Screenplay: Kazuo Ishiguro, based on Akira Kurosawa’s film “Ikiru,” written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni. Camera: Jamie D. Ramsay. Editor: Chris Wyatt. Music: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.
• With: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, Adrian Rawlins, Oliver Chris, Hubert Burton, Zoe Boyle, Barney Fishwick, Patsy Ferran, Michael Cochrane, Lia Williams.

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Living Reviews

This British remake of the Japanese classic, Ikiru, scripted by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, is a moving experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

Living soars beyond simple storytelling to reveal an undeniably heartfelt experience with redefining one’s life—even if it’s at the very end.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 26, 2024

Its unshowy, no-frills filmmaking, including a 1.33:1 aspect ratio meant to evoke the period alongside cinematographer Jamie Ramsay's boxy framing, might put viewers off. However, surrender yourself to this quiet, contemplative piece of cinema...

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 23, 2024

Though firmly in the colossal shadows of Kurosawa, Living’s ability to uplift and stir is never compromised, flourishing in a space few remakes ever graze.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2023

Artistic flourishes, excellent acting, and solid craftsmanship notwithstanding, Living is unlikely to displace Ikiru within the pantheon of essential viewing, but hopefully it will impart the same timeless lessons to a new generation.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Living transitions from a devastating look at wasted life into a rebirth of inspiration to make the most of the days.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Bill Nighy is superb in Living, a Kurosawa adaptation that manages to be both enjoyable and heart-wrenching, and reminds us that it’s never too late to start living.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2023

Do not let the slow pace of Living put you off. This is a beautifully told story that we can all learn from so sit back and enjoy one of the best acting performances that we have seen in a number of years – thanks to the talented Mr Nighy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 22, 2023

Living acts as a wonderful late career showcase for Bill Nighy and his versatility as an actor, ably supported by a fine cast. Ishiguro’s script will likely interest some and he does plenty to dissuade unfavourable comparisons to the original

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2023

Living is a remake that also stands on its own, an independent piece of work in spite of its clear parallels to an earlier film, equally effective and equally worth watching.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 12, 2023

Living yields a late-career peak for Nighy, and a moving experience for the rest of us.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2023

A well-crafted story about a bureaucrat's spiritual transformation in the face of death.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 28, 2023

What makes life worthwhile? Williams finds his purpose in the face of death, and his graceful and moving rebirth is a reminder to live while alive.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 10, 2023

Ishiguro and Hermanus thankfully don’t flub the assignment, even if they rarely hit the emotional highs of their adaptation's predecessor.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 27, 2023

Living transmits a profound emotional experience that invites us to reflect upon the beauty and complexity of life. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 25, 2023

Impeccably shot and beautifully scored, Living is destined to stand as a recurring answer to the question of whether or not cinema should insist on Westernised remakes of beloved foreign films.

Full Review | Apr 25, 2023

It’s interesting to note the cross-cultural transferral, for the film is about the universal theme that we all share as a humanity, living a meaningful life in the face of death.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 22, 2023

Conveying the difference between being and relishing so effortlessly and also so heartbreakingly, Nighy is a marvel, and one that the movie around him lives for.

Full Review | Apr 7, 2023

Often proclaimed as Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru is a certified classic. But having watched it again recently, I was struck by the degree to which the remake improves on the original.

A singular moment that comes riding on such a lifelike performance from Nighy that it doesn’t seem like acting at all.

Full Review | Apr 3, 2023

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Living review: Bill Nighy delivers an almost startling transformation in this beautiful period drama

In a performance tipped for oscar attention, the british actor sheds his trademark, twinkling charisma like snakeskin, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Oliver Hermanus. Starring: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke. 12A, 102 minutes.

Ikiru , in its plaintive modernity, may not be the most widely recognisable of Akira Kurosawa’s films. It can’t be slotted so neatly beside the savage violence and heroic ideals of his historical films, Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957) or Ran (1985). But the 1952 drama’s message, that a worthy legacy can be built from the tiniest and most fleeting of things, has endured. It’s encapsulated in the single image of a dying bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) singing to himself as he sits on the swingset of the playground he helped build. Decades later, it’s an image that’s been reframed but barely rethought by South African director Oliver Hermanus, Nobel Prize-winning screenwriter Ishiguro Kazuo and actor Bill Nighy with Living . But, like the bureaucrat’s cherished swingset, that vague feeling of inconsequence shouldn’t make much difference. What does it matter if a film isn’t necessarily built to last? Living still has its compelling beauty.

Hermanus’s film is set in the Fifties, making it a period piece rather than a contemporary portrait as Ikiru was. It also takes place halfway around the world in London. Nighy’s bureaucrat, Mr Williams, is dying of stomach cancer. He’s spent the majority of his life in the same job at London County Hall, its monotony as constant as the piles of paperwork that pen him into his desk. It’s a necessary bit of mess, his young employee Ms Harris (Aimee Lou Wood) warns him, since without them “people suspect you of not having anything very important to do”.

Following his diagnosis, Mr Williams seeks existential comfort not from his own son, who he insists “has his own life”, but from a Brighton louche (Tom Burke) and the cheery Ms Harris. He invites the latter out to the movies and then for a drink, while confessing that he doesn’t feel able to go home (read: be alone) quite yet. She worries he’s developed a strange infatuation. But in reality, Mr Williams seems convinced that proximity to youth might be able to stave off his own mortality. “I have no special quality,” Ms Harris insists. He will have to seek meaning elsewhere.

Much of the artfulness of Living does, in part, feel borrowed from Ikiru . Here the chaotic symphony of city life is rendered not through car horns but the steady beat of commuter footsteps, surging back and forth along the same daily paths. Those towering paper stacks slice through frames, isolating its characters, who are sometimes made to look as small and crushable as ants. Hermanus ruminates on these images a little more than Kurosawa might. He already knows their power, and allows cinematographer Jamie D Ramsay to bathe them in a soft, milky light.

Crucially, we are not told of Mr Williams’s condition up front, as Ikiru does through its introductory narration. Instead, we’re introduced to him through the eyes of Mr Wakeling (Alex Sharp), a new hire at the office – specifically, in a shot of Mr Williams as seen through a train window, appropriately framed by a circle of morning frost. Nighy, too, has shed his trademark, twinkling charisma like snakeskin. What lies beneath is something almost spectral in its stillness, a man already half-dead and certainly deserving of Ms Harris’s secret nickname of “Mr Zombie”. It’s an almost startling transformation for the actor, a standout performance of an already much-lauded career. His contributions help guide Living on its muted but no less emotive journey to that singular image of a man, renewed, alone on a swingset. Hermanus is more than happy for his film to live in the shadows of Kurosawa’s. There’s still much to savour.

‘Living’ is in cinemas from 4 November

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Living Communes with the Past to Honor a Kurosawa Classic

When it was properly released in the U.S. in 1960, eight years after it had opened in Japan, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru was sometimes marketed with the image of a half-naked dancer who appeared briefly in the film – quite a bait-and-switch for a somber, nearly two-and-a-half hour drama about an elderly Japanese bureaucrat dying of cancer. That infamous marketing campaign has gone down in history as a prime example of the flamboyant dishonesty of American film distributors in the 1950s and 60s. But it was also an understandable bit of chicanery. “Come watch an old man die!” wasn’t much of a tagline then, nor is it now.

Oliver Hermanus’s new drama Living , a rather faithful British remake of Ikiru set in 1950s London, has a similar challenge; we like to think we live in more sophisticated times, but we’re probably no more likely to go see such a seemingly morbid story any more than those earlier audiences were. So, it may come as a bit of a surprise when Living starts and we are immediately jolted by…color. Maybe not technically Technicolor, but something similarly saturated and rich. The film’s shimmering images, with their deep shadows and symmetric elegance, framed carefully in a classic Academy aspect ratio, create an effect reminiscent of something from the very period in which the movie is set.   Living doesn’t try to reinvent or reimagine Ikiru so much as transport it, as if to speculate what Kurosawa’s masterpiece might have looked like had it been produced in the British film industry, in color, at around the same time.

In many of its details, the new movie, written by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, adheres closely to the original. Our hero, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy), is a stuffed-shirt functionary who, upon learning that he’s got only a few months left to live, struggles to find meaning and joy. Then he realizes that, as a lifelong civil servant who understands the levers of power in the paralyzing bureaucracy in which he works, he can make a difference by simply helping build a modest children’s playground in a neglected corner of the city.

It would be incorrect, however, to call Hermanus and Ishiguro’s approach a replication, or imitation. The music and the cutting, or for that matter the performances, aren’t in themselves what you’d find in a ‘50s film. This is not campy cosplay, but a kind of communion with the spirit and simplicity of the past. Because there’s something ingenious about the film’s style. Living traffics in relatively basic ideas. The repression and conformity of stuffy middle-class jobs, the need to look up from a life lived within the tight parameters of society and to seize the moment – these are rudimentary, even corny themes at this point, worked over in novels and films for decades. How, then, to revitalize them for today’s audience? Well, maybe by evoking the textures of a film made in the 1950s, to help bridge the cognitive gap. A more modern approach might seem impoverished, shallow, lacking in complexity. Now, cloaked in the trappings of a film from 70 years ago, it feels like a message relayed from a hazy past to our smug present.

Like Ikiru , Living locks us into the central character’s despair. Grief and mortality transform this shadow-figure into an avatar of the human condition; we know just enough about him to let our imaginations race, and not much more. Lanky and prim, the always-excellent Nighy portrays Williams with an aristocratic reserve. We slowly learn that for him, this veneer of calm and muted confidence is an existential ambition; he’s spent his life aspiring to be a gentleman. This actually stands in marked contrast to Ikiru ’s Takashi Shimura, one of Japan’s greatest and most versatile actors, who brought to that film’s protagonist Watanabe a broad, almost theatrical anguish. Suffer in silence or rage at the snuffing of one’s light; either approach works. We all die in our own way.

Moving and engaging and visually splendid in equal measure, Living makes for a surprisingly pleasant cinematic journey, but Ikiru is a 142-minute machine designed to crush your heart into a million pieces. New Yorkers can actually see Kurosawa’s film in all its 35mm glory at the Metrograph starting next week; for everybody else, there’s Criterion or HBO Max . If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. While its canonic status is secure, Ikiru is one Kurosawa classic that sometimes gets ignored because it’s not a crime picture or a Samurai epic. But it remains a marvelous showcase for the director’s humanity, and for his ability to strip his characters of their illusions and biases, layer by layer, until all that remains is something raw, real, and beautiful. (It should come as no surprise that the team that created this movie immediately went and made Seven Samurai .) When Watanabe, in Ikiru ’s most indelible scene, finds himself all alone one night on a swing in the playground he made possible, it feels like we’re seeing this character in full for the first time, his upright past and his sorrowful present (for he has no future) collapsing into one devastating frame, an old man singing a song from his childhood to himself in the snow.

Both Ikiru and Living are set in the years following World War II, and while the war is mentioned briefly, one does wonder how much the destructive uncertainty of those years (not to mention the global depression that preceded them) played into Williams and Watanabe’s respective desires to put their heads down and work their uneventful jobs. Monotony and constancy gain their own kind of luster when the world is going mad. Yes, Kurosawa saw a stifling, repressive complacency in the workaday bureaucrats of post-war Japan, and there are passages of Ikiru where he skewers them mightily. But he also saw their humanity, their buried striving. The highest compliment I can pay Living is that it takes those dusty ideas and makes them resonate once more. Not unlike remembering an old, familiar song, and understanding it for the first time.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Living’ on Netflix, a Lovely Late-Career Highlight for the Stalwart Bill Nighy

Where to stream:.

• Living (2022)

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Stalwart thespian Bill Nighy earned a well-deserved 2023 Oscar nomination for Living (now on Netflix), the British remake of Akira Kurosawa’s humanist masterpiece Ikiru , which was itself based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich . Perhaps surprisingly, it was Nighy’s first Oscar nod of a lengthy career ranging from playing villains in Underworld and Pirates of the Caribbean movies to ensemble roles in the Exotic Marigold Hotel films to being part of director Richard Curtis’ stable of actors (Nighy was in About Time and won a BAFTA for his role in Love Actually ). In Living he plays a lifelong bureaucrat going through an existential crisis after being diagnosed with terminal illness; although he experiences some regret about the way he lives his life, you’re not likely to feel the same about watching this moving drama.  

LIVING : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We need an outsider perspective first, and it belongs to Mr. Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp), the fresh new hire at a London governmental office that’s stuffed to the brim with people shuffling papers. He meets his buttoned-up coworkers on the commuter train platform, and is advised to stay a few steps behind their boss, Mr. Williams (Nighy), who carries with him an air of authority and superiority. Mr. Williams isn’t THE boss though, as he bows to the Chairman on his way to his desk, at the head of a group of workers best described as administrators, because it’s a vague term that could mean anything, and it’s not quite clear exactly what they do all day, but it’s definitely busy work. Mr. Wakeling – this being Britain in 1953, everybody is referred to by their honorifics – meets his coworker Miss Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood of Sex Education ), and she half-jokes that if he maintains a tower of papers on his desk, nobody will even notice he’s there. 

We see an example of what happens in this office when three women arrive with a petition. They’d like the city to convert a bombed-out chunk of sewage-ridden concrete into a playground for children, which requires this approval from that department and that permit from this department, and Mr. Wakeling learns a valuable first-day-on-the-job lesson as he leads them up one flight of stairs and through this corridor and into that room and down another flight of stairs and through that corridor and into this room and everyone they meet refers them to a different department and they end up right back where they began, at Mr. Williams’ desk, where he calmly takes their petition and adds it to a pile of paperwork, perhaps to be seen only after civilization collapses and archaeologists of the future dig through the rubble and attempt to piece together how the long-dead bureaucracy functioned, and the thought of them trying to figure it out is deeply funny and ironic, because I’m not sure anyone here in the present moment of this playground petition truly knows how all of this works.

This hapless endeavor has been the whole of Mr. Williams’ life to this point, and to judge his inexpressive face, he never questioned it until now, because he just found out he has six months to live. He takes the diagnosis home and sits in the dark and when his son and daughter-in-law come home, he urges them to sit with him and they decline, oblivious to the fact that something’s clearly wrong. Read into that as you may. He procures many bottles of pills, empties half of his bank account and – what exactly does he intend to do with that? Well, it doesn’t happen. He meets Mr. Sutherland (Tom Burke), a struggling writer, who takes Mr. Williams out, to live a little at clubs and pubs, and he ends up singing a sad, sad song. He then serendipitously meets Miss Harris, who asks him to sign a reference letter for her new job – and they become unlikely friends. A wall or two falls down as they share a bit about themselves, including how she referred to him as “Mr. Zombie” because he was “not dead, but not alive either.” Meanwhile, it’s been weeks since Mr. Williams last showed up at the office; perhaps he no longer lives to work like he did for so, so very long.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s easy to draw a few parallels between Living and the far less-subtle Tom Hanks vehicle A Man Called Otto : Protagonists preoccupied with niggling details in day-to-day routines, contemplating suicide and making platonic friends with younger women who help them establish fresh perspectives on life.

Performance Worth Watching: We’ve seen Nighy be funny and over the top many times before (especially as franchise bad guys), but Living is the exact opposite of those performances, a quiet, stately and mannered characterization colored in shades of longing and regret. It’s easily the most accomplished and thoughtful performance of his long, diverse career.

Memorable Dialogue: “I have a little Scotch in me.” – Mr. Williams drops a double-entendre when he steps up to sing an old Scottish song

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro (author of the novels Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day ) shifts the setting of Ikiru to postwar London so they may couch the story within 1,000 microvariations of mannerly British politeness, including those that seem polite but aren’t very polite at all. It’s an inspired choice, and Living comes off as a classical parable in a vein similar to Ebenezer Scrooge’s existential crisis of conscience. On its face, the film is emotionally stripped down, even sentimental at times, but the richness and clarity of Nighy’s performance prompts us to read into the character, to ponder how and why he got to this place of profound detachment. His professional subordinates stay a few steps behind him on the sidewalk; the citizens requesting his assistance get the runaround; he’s emotionally estranged from his son even though they live in the same house. 

How did Mr. Williams get this way? That’s when conjecture finds root and blooms. I see a willful devotion to conformity and propriety. I see a workaholic who committed himself to the least important things in life. I see a rigid man who can only be shaken from routine by tragedy. I see a long-delayed expansion of self-awareness. I see someone who needs to look outside his tiny sphere for a second chance – and thankfully finds some kindness, in Mr. Sutherland and especially Miss Harris. When Nighy and Wood share the screen – they share a wonderful, natural chemistry – nothing seems too late, or hopeless. 

There’s a kind of bleak comedy embedded in Living ’s depiction of the Establishment, its inefficiency and emotional detachment. It seems to have swallowed our protagonist, who perhaps allowed it to happen willingly; emotions are messy and chaotic, and at least the workday brings the illusion of order to the world. And yet, that structure has enslaved him. There’s nothing quite so heartbreaking as hearing Mr. Williams confess to a stranger that his plan to have fun, to “live a little,” fails because he simply doesn’t know how. A simple moment like that might seem trite and sentimental in another context, one less committed to the suggestive details of setting and nonverbal expression. Hermanus, Ishiguro, Nighy and Wood together find a richly exquisite intersection of time and place and character, and the result is quietly profound.

Our Call: Living yields a late-career peak for Nighy, and a moving experience for the rest of us. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Living review: bill nighy gets vulnerable in touching adaptation [middleburg].

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What does it mean to live? Living aims to not answer that question so much as explore how much the zest for life is lost the older people get. Adapted from the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru , which was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich , Living is directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro. Boasting a lovely, vulnerable performance by Bill Nighy , Living is a rousing drama that gets to the heart of being human and what gets in the way of living life to its fullest.

Bill Nighy’s Mr. Williams is a man who is stuck in his ways; he likes to keep things in a specific order, and has fallen into the trap of bureaucracy, which sees him becoming a shell of himself. His stoic, grumpy demeanor is wildly different from that of Peter Wakeling’s (Alex Sharp), who is new to Mr. Williams’ office and whose optimism is quickly squashed after his first day. After Mr. Williams receives the news that he has only months left to live, he decides to figure out how to truly live a full life. The only issue is he no longer remembers how to do that. With the help of Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), an assistant who previously worked with him who becomes his friend, Mr. Williams attempts to live the rest of his days doing things that are worthwhile.

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Unlike most films that tackle living with death looming over them, Living is a simple story, one that doesn’t see Mr. Williams learning to skydive or going off on some wild adventure in a bid to feel alive again. Rather, the film is full of longing and regret, but it allows Nighy’s character to search for his own purpose, however small. In a poignant scene Mr. Williams explains to Margaret that he doesn’t want to be like the child who sits on the sidelines while other kids are playing, waiting to be called back inside without participating in life. The film doesn’t take the oft-repeated “live today like there’s no tomorrow” to heart, perfectly content to focus on what Mr. Williams is capable of doing for others in his position while he still can.

With jobs being as time-consuming and repetitive as they are, one begins to forget what it’s like to have the energy and optimism to lead a fulfilling, robust life. To that end, Living remembers Mr. Williams’ humanity and allows him to shed the bureaucratic rigidity and formulaic life he’s been leading. As he does so, the film begins to thaw along with him, becoming heartwarming, thoughtful, and emotional. There’s a touching sensitivity and longing that permeates the film, uplifting the film’s finale. Hermanus infuses the film with tenderness and gentle moments that underscore Nighy’s own performance, which is open and humble. Aimee Lou Wood is quite lovely here as well, bringing hope and empathy to her role.

Living also highlights the bursts of inspiration one might have in terms of leaving the bureaucratic life behind, while showcasing how easy it can be to fall back into old habits because they’re comfortable. Can one truly live if they’re confined to their work and the strict rules that make up the system that keeps things from advancing? Living suggests that one must fully embrace the present and persevere despite the obstacles that will surely stand in the way. The film, though set in another time period, speaks to the present, where the stress of the everyday makes it increasingly difficult to live life to its fullest. The film, with its warmth, emotion, and earnestness, is a reminder that the act of living, and not just going through the motions, is a choice worth making.

Next: White Noise Review: Noah Baumbach's Latest Is Messy, Tedious Drama [Middleburg]

Living had its 2022 Middleburg Film Festival premiere in October. The film releases in limited theaters on December 23, and will expand in January 2023. It is 102 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for some suggestive material and smoking.

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In 1950s London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis. In 1950s London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis. In 1950s London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis.

• Oliver Hermanus
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Akira Kurosawa
• Shinobu Hashimoto
• Aimee Lou Wood
• 233 User reviews
• 180 Critic reviews
• 81 Metascore
• 10 wins & 48 nominations total

Top cast 53

• Margaret Harris

• Peter Wakeling

• Mrs McMasters

• (as John MacKay)

• Mrs Matthews

• Doctor Matthews

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The production designers went to a great deal of trouble to make this film look like it was made in the era it was set, including avoiding quick edits, softening the colour palette and using a relevant font for the film credits.
• Goofs If you leave Waterloo Station to walk to the Greater London County Council (GLCC) you don't walk across Westminster bridge. They're on the same side South Bank.

Williams : I don't have time to get angry.

• Connections Featured in EE BAFTA Film Awards (2023)
• Soundtracks Tempo di Valse Written by Antonín Dvorák Performed by Berliner Philharmoniker , Herbert von Karajan Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH Under licence from Universal Music Operations Ltd

User reviews 233

• May 9, 2023
• How long is Living? Powered by Alexa
• November 4, 2022 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• County Hall (United Kingdom)
• Film i Väst (Sweden)
• Worthing, West Sussex, England, UK (conversation in the Lido Cafe between Mr. Williams and Sutherland)
• County Hall
• Lipsync Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Dec 25, 2022
• $12,377,310

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 42 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Johnny Oleksinski

‘living’ review: extraordinary bill nighy will break your heart.

In a year of huge performances, such as Cate Blanchett in “Tár” and Brendan Fraser in “The Whale,” it’s soothing and occasionally a tad unnerving to watch Bill Nighy be so Zen calm in the affirming movie “Living.” 

Nighy speaks scarcely louder than a whisper as Mr. Williams, a shaken man concealing a fatal illness from his son and employees. The actor never erupts in anger, howls in anguish or squeals in euphoria. He’s eerily quiet. Like Williams, Nighy is keeping a secret from us, too, and we are in turn fascinated by his every blink and sigh.

Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (some suggestive material and smoking). In select theaters Friday.

The 73-year-old British actor, who’s had an extraordinary four-decade career on stage and screen, has a strong shot for a well-deserved first Oscar nomination.

“Living,” a fantastic film all around, is a shrewd adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 movie “Ikiru” (or “To Live”) and is appropriately transplanted to post-war 1952 London. 

Williams is a blasé bureaucrat with the now-defunct London County Council, where he is in charge of the public works department. Feared and respected by his employees, such as the bright-eyed Mr. Wakeling (Alex Sharp), he does little except ignore requests from concerned citizens, or shoves them off to other supervisors who shove them right back into his neglected filing cabinet. His office is a cycle of resigned inaction — kinda like life. 

One day, the always-responsible gent mysteriously doesn’t come into work, and instead takes the train to seaside Brighton, where he gets drunk at the pub with an eccentric author. He also begins meeting up with a pretty assistant Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood, sublime) — not romantically — for lunches and movies. Those closest to the widower, like his uncaring, money-hungry son, are baffled by his behavior.

Williams confuses them even more when he becomes obsessed with three mothers’ requests to build a playground on a derelict plot of land in their neighborhood to serve underprivileged kids. He is determined to do whatever it takes to see the project to completion. 

In those scenes, Nighy — still with a stiff upper lip — breaks your heart. Awakened Williams is not unlike Scrooge on Christmas morning, only he’s truer to life and our own buttoned-up repression than a Victorian bloke in a bathrobe ordering a kid to buy a goose.

Director Oliver Hermanus has as much restraint as his star (and for a modestly sized movie, impressively manages a visually believable 1950s Britain), and the viewer never feels emotionally manipulated. 

When our eyes begin to well up with tears toward the soulful ending, we’re as surprised and self-reflective as the characters are.

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Common Sense Media Review

Inspiring British drama reflects on meaning of life.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Living is a tender British drama that's about a man with a terminal illness but remains wholly uplifting in its own, subtle way. When Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy) is told he has less than a year to live, he begins to look back on his life and consider what he can do in the time he has…

Why Age 13+?

Characters are seen smoking at work, in bars, in restaurants. Characters drink,

The notion of death runs throughout, though there's no violence of note. A chara

Characters visit a nightclub that features a belly dancer who removes their biki

Two characters go out for an expensive lunch. Mention of life savings, half of w

Any Positive Content?

Make the most of your life, ensuring your days are full of purpose. It's never t

Mr. Williams is initially a reserved man who does little more than work and trav

Central character Mr. Williams is an aging White male dying of cancer. Very mino

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters are seen smoking at work, in bars, in restaurants. Characters drink, too; in one sequence two characters get very drunk. A character gives another some sleeping pills after they complain they can't sleep.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

The notion of death runs throughout, though there's no violence of note. A character produces a number of jars of sleeping pills, suggestion being that they were considering taking their own life. A character is diagnosed with a terminal illness. A bloody tissue; coughing up blood. A funeral takes place; passing reference to a dead spouse.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters visit a nightclub that features a belly dancer who removes their bikini top to the applauding audience -- no nudity as it's shot from behind. As characters walk through an alleyway, a couple are briefly seen kissing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Two characters go out for an expensive lunch. Mention of life savings, half of which is briefly shown.

Positive Messages

Make the most of your life, ensuring your days are full of purpose. It's never too late to change for the better. Helping others is something to be proud of. Perseverance is often required to achieve worthwhile accomplishments.

Positive Role Models

Mr. Williams is initially a reserved man who does little more than work and travel to and from his office. But when he is told he has less than a year to live, he finds solace and inspiration in his friendship with Margaret. She unwittingly encourages him to live the remainder of his life to its fullest.

Diverse Representations

Central character Mr. Williams is an aging White male dying of cancer. Very minor ethnic diversity in supporting roles. Lead female character, Margaret, is fully rounded and serves a profound purpose on both Williams and subsequently on the narrative. Given the setting -- 1950s England -- the workplace is male dominated. But many women stick up for themselves and refuse to be ignored.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Living is a tender British drama that's about a man with a terminal illness but remains wholly uplifting in its own, subtle way. When Mr. Williams ( Bill Nighy ) is told he has less than a year to live, he begins to look back on his life and consider what he can do in the time he has left. As he reflects on and regrets letting life pass him by, Williams develops an unlikely friendship with his younger ex-colleague Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), who inspires him to seize the day. Set in 1950s England, Williams' office is largely male dominated, and characters are seen smoking at work and at pubs. There is also drinking, mostly in moderation, although in one scene, two men get very drunk. There is a non-explicit conversation where a character suggests they considered ending their own life by taking sleeping pills. A funeral takes place, and there is a brief reference to a dead spouse, but there is no violence or strong language to speak of. The film is a remake of acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa 's Ikiru . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Beautiful British film

What's the story.

LIVING is the story of Mr. Williams ( Bill Nighy ), a man who has become trapped in the monotonous clockwork of everyday life, lacking inspiration in a postwar world. When he discovers he is terminally ill, he confronts his past and seeks to salvage what he has left of his future. He befriends his ex-colleague Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), and her youthful vibrancy and zest for life rubs off on him. He realizes that before he dies, he wants to do something meaningful, something he can be remembered for.

Is It Any Good?

This moving British drama is standing on the shoulders of cinematic royalty, as an English-language remake of Akira Kurosawa 's critically acclaimed Ikiru . Thankfully Living more than holds its own. Put together in the most beautiful way by South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus , the director captures the clockwork synchrony of everyday life, and yet does so with such passion. The lighting, the tonality -- it's truly sumptuous cinema, and manages to be so beautiful despite the mundaneness it depicts. But then that's the point and the takeaway message: that we should all try to find the beauty in the monotony of our lives, as our hero, Nighy's Mr. Williams, tries to do as he approaches the end of his life.

What transpires is a tender film, a warm production that manages to stay on the right side of sentimentality throughout. What helps is the absorbing central performance from Nighy. In what's arguably a career-best performance from him, he's matched at every turn by the charming Wood as Margaret, Williams' ex-colleague and the film's inspiration.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Living had to say about life. What lessons did Mr. Williams learn? What did he do with these lessons? What did you take away from the film? How to talk to kids about difficult subjects.

Discuss the character of Margaret. How did she inspire Mr. Williams? Would you describe her as a positive role model ? What makes a good role model?

How were drinking and smoking depicted in the film? Were they glamorized? How has our behavior when it comes to drinking and smoking changed from when the movie was set?

Living is an English-language remake of a Japanese film. What other remakes have you seen? How did they compare?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 23, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : April 11, 2023
• Cast : Bill Nighy , Aimee Lou Wood , Alex Sharp
• Director : Oliver Hermanus
• Inclusion Information : Black directors, Female actors, Asian writers
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship , History
• Character Strengths : Curiosity
• Run time : 102 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some suggestive material and smoking
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : May 29, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 23, 2022
• Bill Nighy as Mr. Williams; Aimee Lou Wood as Miss Margaret Harris; Alex Sharp as Mr. Peter Wakeling; Tom Burke as Mr. Sutherland; Adrian Rawlins as Mr. Middleton; Hubert Burton as Mr. Rusbridger; Oliver Chris as Mr. Hart; Michael Cochrane as Sir James; Patsy Ferran as Fiona Williams; Barney Fishwick as Michael Williams

Home Release Date

• March 3, 2023
• Oliver Hermanus

Distributor

• Sony Pictures Classic

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

To live a life, and live it well … how does one do such a thing?

Perhaps Mr. Williams should’ve asked the question long before.

Mr. Williams— always Mr. Williams—has lived his life (the last few decades of it, at any rate) with absolute respectability. It’s what is expected of him. Indeed, it’s what he expects of himself.

He is, after all, a man of some import. As the manager of the Public Works Department in London’s County Hall, he wears a black suit and bowler hat, as is expected. He’s never late and works a full day, as expected. People come asking for the Public Works department to do—well, works for the public, as expected.

And as expected, Mr. Williams rarely says yes. He rarely says no, either. He is, after all, an integral part of a bureaucracy . Papers are shuffled upstairs or down, sent across the hall or across the road. And often, they simply sit in the stacks of papers at Public Works for a few weeks, until the matter either disappears or a new request is filed.

“There’s no harm,” Mr. Williams will say.

That gentle statement about grinding government delay, too, is expected of him. He has done little else for lo these many years.

But then something unexpected happens to Mr. Williams. An incurable cancer has been submitted, and death is seeking admittance. He can file it away six months, perhaps nine at the most. But then, death will come through his door and take him away, not even bothering with the requisite triplicate forms. Nothing can stop his shadowed scythe. Not even British bureaucracy.

When Mr. Williams doesn’t go to work the day after he finds out, it’s as if Big Ben itself skipped a toll. He instead goes to a seaside town and confesses his predicament to a free-spirited playwright he meets in a café. Mr. Williams tells the man (Mr. Sutherland) that he came to town hoping to shed his rigid, aged Britishness and, for once, live a little.

But now that he’s there, with a willing spirit and spending money to spare, Mr. Williams realizes something rather sad.

“I don’t know how,” he confesses.

To live a life well? To do that, given the unforgivable timetable Mr. Williams has been given, is all-but-impossible. But to live well? Perhaps there’s still time for that.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Mr. Sutherland, the playwright whom Mr. Williams meets, is certainly eager to show Mr. Williams the pleasures that perhaps he so long ignored. But Mr. Williams isn’t really interested in wiling away the days he has left on tawdry pastimes. He’s after something more elusive, something with more meaning.

He sees a glint of that in Miss Harris, a young lady who worked for him briefly at Public Works. She’s young and spirited, and Mr. Williams begins to spend what time he can with her—hoping, he confesses later, that she might somehow teach him to live more fully. But that, too, while helpful, is a dead end.

No, he ultimately finds meaning by going back to work , of all things. But instead of shuffling papers to other departments or letting them sit in his baskets, he takes on particular request on. He uses whatever means he has at his disposal to shepherd the project through County Hall’s byzantine system and work-averse managers, showing a stunning understanding of what method of persuasion might work for each. He even begs essentially the manager of the entire bureaucracy—a titled noble to whom Mr. Williams has long literally bowed in deference—to consider his petition.

In so doing, Mr. Williams does something practically unprecedented: He gets something done. And by the time he’s done, he’s inspired others to do the same.

Spiritual Elements

Mr. Williams seems to be a nominally religious man. He talks about returning to “his Maker” and compares the process of dying to that of children being called home by their mothers after a day of play. His funeral is conducted in a traditional church adorned by stained glass windows.

Someone quips that laughter is frowned upon early in the morning,  “rather like church.” Miss Harris has made up nicknames of most of the people she works with in County Hall, and her nickname for Mr. Williams is “Mr. Zombie,” explaining that zombies are like Egyptian mummies that are dead but continue to walk around.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Mr. Sutherland, the playwright, comes across as sort of a intellectual hedonist. He talks to the café’s proprietor, Mrs. Blake, about his latest play, “Shocking Stockings.” He tells Mrs. Blake that she’d likely think it “smutty and trivial,” but he assures her that the play’s reception, and her own reaction, would be much different in Paris.

When Sutherland learns of Mr. Williams’ plight, he takes him out to many of the grimy hotspots he frequents. The last turns out to be a 1950s strip joint, of sorts: The crowd is entertained by a buxom woman in rather revealing garb (think something like a beefy bikini) dancing on stage. At one point, we see that the woman has removed her top, but we see her only from the back. Other women there reveal a bit of cleavage.

Mr. Williams’ and Miss Harris’s relationship is absolutely innocent. But they do meet on a couple of occasions, and they’re spotted by a local busybody who assumes they are having an affair and stirs up rumors to that effect.

Miss Harris is also sensitive about how these outings might look. “Someone might suppose that you’re becoming infatuated.” Mr. Williams admits there’s truth to that, but “not quite as some might suppose.”

We see a man and a woman embrace in an alleyway.

Violent Content

When Mr. Sutherland (the playwright) complains of not being able to sleep, Mr. Williams pulls out several vials of what must be sleeping agent that he’s carrying with him. Both understand that Mr. Williams had considered killing himself by taking them.

Mr. Williams suffers acute pain in his side at times, obviously from the cancer. At one juncture, he takes a handkerchief away from his mouth, and it seems to be stained with blood. We learn that Mr. Williams’ wife died some time before.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear one use of the British profanity “bugger.”

Drug & Alcohol Content

Several people smoke cigarettes throughout the film—in keeping with its 1950s setting, but also enough to earn a PG-13 rating.

Both Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Williams drink heavily when Sutherland takes his new friend out on the town. At one point, when Mr. Williams staggers over to sing a Scottish folk tune, he tells the crowd that he has a little Scotch in his family. “It looks like you’ve got a bit of Scotch in you now, mate!” someone shouts. Later, Mr. Williams seems as though he’s almost passed out on some woman’s shoulder.

In a flashback, we see someone, perhaps Mr. Williams’ father, drink a beer. Mr. Williams asks Miss Harris to go out for a drink with him—an invitation that she grudgingly accepts. (He seems to have an alcoholic beverage, but Miss Harris appears to be just drinking water.)

Other Noteworthy Elements

A vacant, rubble-strewn lot (the wreckage probably still lingering from World War II) is muddy with what someone calls sewage water.

Mr. Williams and his son seem to regard each other well, but they’re not what you’d call “close.” Indeed, the senior Mr. Williams never tells his son that he’s dying. (Indeed, he only tells two people: Miss Harris and Mr. Sutherland.)

When his father does, indeed, die, the younger Mr. Williams is filled with remorse—feeling terrible that he died in “all that cold.” Mr. Williams was indeed out in the cold weather toward the end, but it’s likely that his son was talking not about the weather outside, but the atmosphere in the flat that they all shared.

Living is aptly titled.

It’s a deceptively simple, even nondescript name, to be sure—easily forgotten and, perhaps, easily overlooked.

But as the movie tells us, so is living itself. We all, by the nature of reading this review, are alive. But how many of us know how to live?

A lot of us—even many of us Christians—don’t quite know what to do with our days on earth until they’re almost gone. And then we remember all the places we wanted to see and the things we hoped to do. We regret the time we spent killing it and wish we had more time to do the things we really valued. We think about how to repair relationships or somehow, in some way, get a little closer to the person that God wanted us to be this whole time.

But what sort of person does God want us to be?

For Mr. Williams, the answer is one we’d do well to at least think about (even if Mr. Williams would likely not bring God into the conversation at all): It’s a person who does his best. Who makes a difference. A person who doesn’t just check boxes and shuffle papers, but works to make life a little better for those around him.

I love the fact that Mr. Williams didn’t punt his life for a few months of fun or frivolity. He didn’t spend it trying to recapture the joy of youth. He didn’t, ultimately, leave who he was and who he’d been all these years. He just became a better version of that person—making a difference as just a regular ol’ bureaucrat.

Living has a nice pedigree. It’s an adaptation of the Japanese film Ikiru by the legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, which was in turn inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s classic novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

And it, also like its predecessors, plays it pretty straight and pretty clean. The content is surprisingly mild for a PG-13 film: We see the interior of a rather naughty tent, and we hear one British-centric profanity. Smoking is fairly pervasive. But that’s it. It’s almost clean enough to be cleared for broadcast on the 1953 version of the BBC.

Of course, this film isn’t for kids. But for adults who like to chew on bigger themes without gagging on content problems, and for those who like to see some very fine performances (lead Bill Nighy is rightly getting some Oscar attention), Living fills out the form for “good movie” and files it in triplicate.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Tragedy Actually Brings Hope: Bill Nighy on Living

In “Living,” Bill Nighy delivers a performance that ranks among the finest in his 50-year career on stage and screen. 

As Mr. Williams, a dedicated civil servant in 1950s London, the beloved British actor conveys a level of emotional repression and socially ingrained stoicism that long ago calcified into paralysis. But when this career bureaucrat is informed he has a fatal illness, the realization of his impending death appears to jolt him back to life. Motivated to make the most of the little time he has remaining, Williams walks off the job and undertakes one final quest for the greater purpose he feels has eluded him in life. 

Not a remake of Akira Kurosawa ’s classic “ Ikiru ” so much as an English translation, “Living”—as scripted by the British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (“The Remains of the Day,” “ Never Let Me Go ”)—finds common spiritual ground between the stifled bureaucrats of Tokyo and London in this mid-century period. Themes of mortality, transience, and meaning—potently set against Japan’s postwar reconstruction—still resonate deeply in postwar Britain, where the stiff upper lip was a matter of both public obligation and personal duty. 

As directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus (“ Moffie ”), “Living” (out December 23 in New York and Los Angeles, then expanding) is most of all a handsomely mounted tribute—to the enduring power of “Ikiru,” of course, but also to the mahogany-toned British dramas of the 1950s, with their vintage opening credits and tactile film grain. Elevated by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch ’s stirring score, Jamie Ramsay ’s chiaroscuro cinematography, Sandy Powell ’s top-drawer costume design, and Helen Scott ’s stellar production design, “Living” fondly resurrects a bygone era. 

At its center stands that immeasurably rich leading role, first played in “Ikiru” by the iconic Takashi Shimura . Nighy rises to the challenge of making it his own. At first, Williams accompanies a local libertine ( Tom Burke , of “ The Souvenir ”) for a night out in Brighton, regaling those in a small pub with his halting rendition of the Scottish folk ballad “O’ Rowan Tree.” Later, when he returns to London and spends an afternoon with a naturally radiant young subordinate ( Aimee Lou Wood , of “Sex Education”), Williams’ confession of the childlike joy he once sacrificed to queen and country moves her to helpless tears. Throughout, Nighy’s wistful dignity and pathos give “Living” its sense of soul.

Earlier this year, at the virtual Sundance Film Festival, where “Living” premiered and scored U.S. distribution with Sony Pictures Classics, Nighy sat down to discuss his philosophy of acting, a lifelong affinity for great writers, and his hardest days on set.

Throughout “Living,” Mr. Williams reflects on what he’s achieved, and he tells Margaret in one crucial scene that what he wanted out of life was to be a gentleman. I wanted to start this interview by asking you, Mr. Nighy, what it means to be a gentleman.  

That’s a very good question. And it is something, I think, that most people aspire to. ‘Gentleman’ is the way it’s expressed in England and perhaps in America. I’m sure there are other words, and I’m sure every culture has a way of expressing that. What does it mean to me? It means someone who is straightforward, honest, decent, and concerns themselves with other people’s welfare, and tries to remain interested, whatever the weather. A gentleman helps out where they can. That would be my off-the-top-of-my-head definition.

How would Williams’ definition differ?

I think it would be, broadly speaking, the same. The details of how it was expressed in his life, or in society, would be different just due to the period. And he would be appalled at some of the elements of my life, or of modern life. But, broadly speaking, I think it would be the same. I approached the part with the assumption that he was someone who was institutionalized in grief. The loss of his wife, very early on, arrested something in him. You have someone who, whatever else he’s doing, is dealing with that. And the repetitious nature of his life, and the fact that he attempts to do everything the same and impeccably orderly every day, is as much to bury himself and to avoid pain, loss, and grief as it is anything else. But, I mean, in those days, one’s behavior was constrained to a much larger degree by society. People took great pleasure in not being too much trouble. When he’s attempting to rehearse how he’s going to tell someone that he’s dying, he prefaces every attempt with, “Well, it’s a bit of a bore.” I’m sure there are equivalents in other countries, and in other cultures, but that’s a very English remark.

I understand that “Living” started over a drink shared between yourself, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Stephen Woolley . 

As you say, I met Ishiguro out, with Stephen Woolley. They were old friends, and they’re film nerds. They spent that evening challenging each other to know nerdish facts, about films generally but often about British films, black-and-white British films from about 1930 to about 1960. But at the end of the evening, Ishiguro and his wife, having been whispering, came out and said, “We know what your next film should be.” And I said, “Well, when you’re ready, let me know.” And then, later, Stephen rang me and said, “This is the plan.” 

They both felt you’d be perfect for the lead role in a remake of “Ikiru,” but how did you feel about that assessment? One reason I personally responded to “Living,” I felt, is that I grew up in England with grandparents who always considered discussing their declining health or personal struggles to be “a bit of a bore,” as you say in the film. Williams epitomizes a very British kind of stoicism.

When talking about the character, most of my discussions were with Oliver Hermanus, who has so brilliantly directed the film. He’s South African, and I don’t know whether that informed [his attitude toward] Williams. I can’t guarantee that, but I think it probably does help. We had a lot of discussions. And it was very interesting for me to talk to somebody from another culture about, like you say, [that characteristic of] your grandparents or my father. My father was a very reserved man, who would aim to never make unnecessary noise or fuss. And, when he was dying, he tried to die with as much dignity and without being too much trouble as he possibly could. So, I’m no stranger to this. And I kind of admire it. I know—probably, now, in psychiatric circles—they would say it’s a disastrous way to conduct your life. But, on the other hand, you can’t help but think, sometimes, “Wow. That’s something to pull off.” 

There’s much about Williams to be admired, though I ached for him as well. The complexity of this character is what made “Ikiru” so rich, and I have to imagine it was rewarding to pour yourself into Ishiguro’s translation of this story. One dialogue in particular, between Williams and Margaret, takes place in a pub. It’s a tremendously affecting scene. What are your memories of filming it?

Well, we worked on it quite a lot. I wanted to emphasize his grief about the loss of his wife, and the length of his widowerhood. I thought that was important, in his dealings with Margaret. I worked very, very hard. I prepared painstakingly and, by the time we got there, I could do it 25 different ways in my sleep. 

But doing it with Aimee Lou Wood, who was just marvelous to work with and to deal with—because she’s really there; I could say all the clichés in the world, but she’s present to the max, and it’s shockingly great—that unlocked it. When you have to do it with your colleague, and also in front of everybody in the crew, because they’re the audience at the time, that is a powerful couple of days. And I felt that it was one of the things on the schedule where you think, “Well, that’s going to be a relatively tough day at the office.” Or at least, I thought, “I passionately want to get this right, because it’s something I’m interested in. And because the writing is so brilliant, I’m interested, anyway—beyond interested, I’m fascinated.” It’s not the case with every gig. 

And I’m also interested in somebody who tries to explain themselves in such moderate language and to explain something so fundamental. The relationship between her and him, how much respect she has for that now that she knows that it’s loneliness reaching out to loneliness—that’s a wonderful thing. And I think the whole thing of playing someone for whom decency is the only option, that it probably never occurs to him to do anything other than conduct himself what he would call “well.” There’s heroism involved, to do that lifelong and never betray that principle, particularly when you see it in the context of society. You see how the violent opposite of that is often expressed in our leadership, the people who become eminent in the world, the people who make a lot of money. Not all of them, it’s not by definition, but often the damaged people who rise to what’s called the “top” of our societies often do not reflect that. Those quiet people who persist in attempting to be straightforward in their dealings with everyone else, to be honest, and to be kind, they take on a heroic appearance within the context of all the dishonesty and lies, within the power-grabbing that goes on with those that are in less good shape.

There’s such a dignity and grace to that life of service. I love what this story suggests, as well, which is that your communities will fill in the story of your life for you. They will shape the story of your legacy. As you’re leading a life, it’s not for you to decide how you’re remembered.

Yes. And, again, the leadership. the people that rise to the top, they attempt to divide us at all times, in order to simply get votes, and to arrange to be empowered. They do intolerable damage to our communities in all areas. But there are millions and billions of decent people around, who attempt to do the right thing.

As someone who has been acting for more than 50 years, and who understands it at such a rare level, what matters to you most about continuing to perform at this time in your life? What drives you on as an actor?

Without sounding too what we call—in my country, your country—“la dee da,” which I expect you’ll remember … 

I would hope to do work that is marginally, minimally progressive, in one way or the other, work that just—to any degree—helps and improves the situation. I hope to do projects where there’s dignity for everybody and that might just help. We’re up against an enormous amount of hugely time-honored, ancient, elaborate constructs that were built on lies, deception, and manipulation, by people hungry for power. And it’s very, very difficult, particularly in recent times, to see how you can proceed as anybody, let alone as an actor. 

But I’m fortunate that I’m in a job where I can do something that says “that”—whatever “that” might be, whether it’s [identifying] part of the problem, part of the solution, or another part of whatever it is. And maybe, just while you’re there, the holy grail is to make it entertaining, in one way or the other, whether it’s funny or whether, in this case, it’s a bring-a-handkerchief kind of movie. But those kinds of movies can be uplifting by the time you leave the cinema. Tragedy actually brings hope. I don’t understand how that works, but it does. You just hope to do good work that might inch us toward something better.

Throughout your career, you’ve worked closely and consistently with talented writers: David Hare , Stephen Poliakoff, Richard Curtis , and now Kazuo Ishiguro. What excites you about their company?

When you list those names, you have my attention. To hear them said out loud like that … I am a very fortunate actor and a very fortunate man to have worked with those men. When I think about it, writers are my heroes. I wanted to be a writer—guess what, like everybody else—and I didn’t have the courage and I never got it, all that. I can procrastinate at an Olympic level. I am the guy who is not writing a book, and I’ve been the guy who’s not writing books since I was old enough to pick up a pen. 

There’s a very good cartoon written by the English comedian, Peter Cook , where two men are in a bar, and one says, “I’m writing a novel.” And the other one says, “Neither am I.” That’s the story of my literary career. But I really admire writers. I think it’s an incredibly hard thing to do. And it’s when I get excited. What really gets me excited? I like music. Sure, I love music. But what really gets me excited is brilliant writing. And those men that you mentioned—like David Hare, who I’ve worked with all my life—they can write dialogue. Obviously, dialogue is my concern, because I’ve got to speak it, so if the writing is really good, it makes my job so much easier. Because it suggests how you should perform it. 

And also, all those people have never picked up a pen for dishonorable reasons, because they’re serious people. And they seek to make the world a better place. No less than that: to make the world a better place. That’s their gig. That’s what they get up every morning and do. And they don’t do anything else. They just do that. It’s thrilling to me that I’m ever in that kind of company, and I love that company. I’m in awe of people who get up and face a blank piece of paper or a blank screen every day. They are my heroes.

You sing in “Living,” and it’s a thing of beauty. Tell me about your rendition of “O’ Rowan Tree” and giving yourself to a performance in that way. How does it differ for you, to be singing as opposed to delivering dialogue?

It’s not something I do a lot of. I have been required to do it before, but not in that context. There’s always a day on the schedule where you go, “Are you kidding? I probably, almost certainly can’t do that.” And then you just hope that you surprise yourself like you did the last time. It’s like when you’re at a funeral for somebody you loved. And you’re fine, you can keep it together until they ask you to sing. But as soon as somebody says, “Now we’re going to sing ‘Hey, Jude,’” I’m a mess. I get the first line out, but then? Forget about it. And I don’t think that’s uncommon. There’s something about the music. You can’t protect yourself from that. You just become a mess. And so that helped. That was in my favor. That day was a tough day, and not just singing the song. There was a lot to achieve on that day. It was very tough. 

There was a young girl called Chloe, and I asked her if she’d mind me asking her a very big favor. She was one of the extras on the job. And I asked her if she’d stand in my eyeline in the corner of the room, and if she’d mind if I sang to her. Who needs that? Some middle-aged—well, some late-middle-aged or old man, drunkenly singing a Scottish folk song straight into your eyes, 29 times. I expect she thought she was going to have a quiet day sitting there, pretending to drink. Anyway, she did it for me, and she never wavered. She maintained her eyeline and made eye contact with me. It helped enormously. It’s probably just some dreadful form of self-indulgence, but who cares? It told the story.

It sounds to me like you serenaded her. 

[ smiles ] Well, I kind of did. Yes. [ laughs ] I did. I just wanted someone to witness it, to be looking into my eyes the whole time so that I had nowhere to hide. And she helped me out.

“Living” will be available in select theaters starting on December 23rd. 

Isaac Feldberg

Isaac Feldberg is an entertainment journalist currently based in Chicago, who’s been writing professionally for nine years and hopes to stay at it for a few more.

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'Living’ Ending Explained and How It Compares to the Original 'Ikiru'

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Fans of Cooper Koch in 'Monsters' Need to Check Out His Shocking Body Horror Movie

This actor has the most movies with 100% on rotten tomatoes, this horror classic holds the guinness record for most appearances of a film in other movies.

While Bill Nighy is known for his supporting roles in films like Love Actually and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, he finally gets to take on a serious leading role in Living . Living gives Nighy the fleshed-out dramatic role that he has been waiting for throughout his extensive and quite impressive career. Living isn’t only a great showcase for a beloved actor, but one of the best films of 2022. Nighy’s understated, quietly powerful performance is almost guaranteed to earn him his first Academy Award nomination, as he has already received recognition for Best Leading Actor at the BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Critic’s Choice award ceremonies. Nighy’s performance has been praised for capturing the viewer’s heart up until the gorgeous final moments.

What Is 'Living' About?

Directed by Oliver Hermanus , Living follows the final months in the life of an employee in the county Public Works department living in London in 1953. Nighy stars as Mr. Rodney Williams, whose daily experience amounts to little more than pushing papers and following orders at work. However, he is informed that he has terminal cancer and will succumb to the disease in a matter of months. As he decides to put his affairs in order, Williams decides to spend his last months having the experiences he’s always dreamed of and leaving an impact on the world.

While Living had the potential to be a deeply depressing and grueling watch, as many films about cancer and other terminal diseases are, it is oddly inspiring considering its subject material. Williams accepts the reality of his situation and chooses to make his last moments count, and spreads both goodwill and compassion to his companions and new friends. Seeing him bond with other, younger characters is particularly moving. The film’s ending only solidifies it as a mature yet sensitive examination of death.

'Living' Is Based on Akira Kurosawa's 'Ikiru'

Living is an English-language remake of the Akira Kurosawa film Ikiru ; many Kurosawa films have been adapted to the English language, and most famously his action classic Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven . Ikiru itself was inspired by Leo Tolstoy 's beloved 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich . Ikiru and Living are virtually identical in concept, but not in execution.

Ikiru follows the Japanese bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe ( Takashi Shimura ), who learns that he has stomach cancer and is given only a matter of months to live. While the characters are all given English-language counterparts, Living adapts the Japanese cultural hallmarks for what would make sense for England during the same period in time; notably, Ikiru was intended to be a contemporary film in its initial release, but Living features historical recreations of the same period. The adjustments to the specificities ensure that the film does not attempt to engage in any cultural appropriation that would be disrespectful to Japanese people.

RELATED: 'Living' Is a Worthy English-Language Remake of Kurosawa's Classic 'Ikiru'

How Does Williams Plan His Last Few Months?

Williams knows that he is disengaged in his job, and finds that the new management within the Public Works program is ineffective and taxing. While initially, Williams focuses on trying to make improvements in a job that he no longer enjoys, he is told by the young secretary Miss Margaret Harris ( Aimee Lou-Wood ) that some of the other youthful employees refer to him as “Mr. Zombie” due to his unchanging routine. Instead of taking this revelation as an insult, Williams is bemused, understanding that his stiffness is a result of his lack of joy. He goes on a spontaneous pub crawl and opens up to the bohemian writer Mr. Sutherland ( Tom Burke ). After exchanging details about their respective personal struggles, Williams helps Sutherland emerge from a downward spiral of self-doubt.

While some other employees perceive Williams’ relationship with Margaret to be a romantic one, he informs her early on during a mealtime conversation that he is only attempting to get to know her because he feels that he cannot tell anyone else about his illness. He proceeds to spend further time with both her and the other employee Peter Wakeling ( Alex Sharp ), energized by their optimism and constructive nature.

Why Does Williams Build the Playground?

After taking note of Margaret and Peters’ zealousness, Williams decides to commit himself energetically to the building, construction, and completion of a playground for children that the Public Works department has neglected to develop for years. Realizing that he has the power to bring this playground to life, Williams decides to give back to the community and complete it. It’s a subtle examination of the depressive nature of bureaucracy and how laborious business procedures remove compassion from the approval process.

The construction of architecture intended to give joy to children represents Williams’ compassion for the young people that inspired him, signifying that he has found happiness in returning to his youthful activities. The park also stands as a remembrance of his life; those who cared about him can reflect on their memories when visiting the playground. While he has spent a lifetime planning architecture in the service of a business, he has now found a personal project in which he has an interest.

What Happens to Williams’ Family?

Although Williams initially is estranged from his son Michael ( Barney Fishwick ) and daughter-in-law Fiona ( Patsy Ferran ), he briefly attempts to bond with them before his passing. While Williams prepares himself to tell Michael about his impending death, he cannot work up the courage to do so. Eventually, he becomes so focused on the construction of the playground that he isn’t given the chance. However, this isn’t meant to be a sour note, as Michael is inspired by his father’s productivity during the end of his life.

What Does the Ending Scene Mean?

In a nearly exact recreation of the final scene in Ikiru , soon after Williams’ funeral, characters walk by the completed park. A local police officer on patrol at night remembers watching Williams visiting the park and sitting peacefully on the swing; it’s a nearly identical recreation of the iconic shot in Ikiru. The last shot of Williams calmly swinging emphasizes that he is now proud of his achievements and is prepared for his death.

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Movie Review: ‘Saturday Night’ is thinly sketched but satisfying

This image released by Sony Pictures shows, from left, Kim Matula, as Jane Curtin, Emily Fairn, as Laraine Newman, Gabriel La Belle, as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott, as Rosie Shuster, and Matt Wood, as John Belushi in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, left, Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin, center, and Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows JK Simmons as Milton Berle in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Nicholas Braun as Andy Kaufman in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Matthew Rhys as George Carlin in a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows a scene from “Saturday Night.” (Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures via AP)

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We are at the apex of “Saturday Night Live” appreciation . Now entering its 50th year, “SNL” has never been more unquestioned as a bedrock American institution. The many years of cowbells, Californians, mom jeans, Totino’s, unfrozen caveman lawyers and vans down by the river have more than established “SNL” as hallowed late-night ground and a comedy citadel.

So it’s maybe appropriate that Jason Reitman’s big-screen ode, “Saturday Night,” should arrive, amid all of the tributes, to remind of the show’s original revolutionary force. Reitman’s film is set in the 90 minutes leading up to showtime before the first episode aired Oct. 11, 1975.

The atmosphere is hectic. The mood is anxious. And through cigarette smoke and backstage swirl rushes Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), who’s trying to launch a new kind of show that even he can’t quite explain.

“Saturday Night,” which opens in theaters Friday and expands in the coming weeks, isn’t a realistic tick-tock of how Michaels did it. And, while it boasts a number of fine performances, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone hoping to see an illuminating portrait of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

No, Reitman’s movie is striving for a myth of “Saturday Night Live.” Michaels’ quest in the film — and though he never strays farther than around the corner from 30 Rock, it is a quest — is not just to marshal together a live show on this particular night, it’s to overcome a cigar-chomping old guard of network television. (Milton Berle is skulking about, even Johnny Carson phones in.) In their eyes, Michaels is, to paraphrase Ned Beatty in “Network,” meddling with the primal forces of nature.

In mythologizing this generational battle, “Saturday Night” is a blistering barn-burner. In most other ways (cue the Debbie Downer trombone), it’s less good. Reitman, who penned the script with Gil Kenan, is too wide-eyed about the glory days of “SNL” to bring much acute insight to what was happening 50 years ago. And his film may be too spread thin by a clown car’s worth of big personalities. But in the movie’s primary goal, capturing a spirit of revolution that once might have seized barricades but instead flocks to Studio 8H, “Saturday Night” at least deserves a Spartan cheer.

A clock ticking down to showtime runs as ominously as it might in “MacGruber” throughout “Saturday Night.” Nothing is close to ready for air. John Belushi (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract. Twenty-eight gallons of fake blood are missing. And, most pressing of all, the network is poised to air a Carson rerun if things don’t take shape. An executive pleading for a script is told, “It’s not that kind of show.”

What kind is it? Michaels, himself, is uncertain. He’s gathered together a “circus of rejects,” most of them then unknown to the public. There is Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien). Also in the mix are Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who spends much of the movie complaining about the untoward things the cast has been doing to Big Bird, Andy Kaufman (Braun again), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and the night’s host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys).

Most of them pass too quickly to make too much of an impression, though a few are good in their moments — notably Smith, playing up Chase’s braggadocio, O’Brien and Morris. Garrett Morris, the cast’s lone Black member, is in a quandary over his role — because of his race and because he was a playwright before being cast. Though “SNL” was revolutionary, it hardly arrived a finished product. Morris here is a reminder of the show’s sometimes — and ongoing — not always easy relationship to diversity, in race and gender.

It also wasn’t always such a break from what came before. When Chase faces off with Berle in a contest over Chase’s fiancee, Jacqueline Carlin (Kaia Gerber) — one of the movie’s few truly charged scenes — they seem more alike than either would like to admit.

It’s not a great sign for “Saturday Night” how much better the old guard is than the young cast. Along with Simmons’ Berle is Willem Dafoe’s NBC executive David Tebet. He provides the movie its most “Network”-flavored drama, seeing “a prophet” in Michaels and, despite wavering skepticism, urging him to be “an unbending force of seismic disturbance.” Also in the mix — and a reminder that the suits had newbies, too — is Dick Ebersol (a refreshingly genuine Cooper Hoffman ), a believer in Michaels but only up to a point.

Ultimately, this is Michaels’ show, and he’s played winningly by LaBelle, the “Fabelmans” star, even if the characterization, like much of “Saturday Night,” is a little thin. Sometimes by his side, as he races to get the show ready is the writer and Michaels’ then-wife, Rosie Shuster (the excellent Rachel Sennott), who you want more of.

It seems to be an unfortunate truth that dramatizations of “Saturday Night Live” inevitably kill it of laughter. That’s true here just as it was in Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” The exception to that, of course, is Tina Fey’s “30 Rock,” which was smart enough to abandon all the “SNL” mythology and focus on what’s funny.

This “Saturday Night” may have a legacy of its own; a lot of this cast, I suspect, will be around for a long time. And, ultimately, when the show finally comes together, it’s galvanizing. The cleverest thing about Reitman’s film is that it ends, rousingly, just where “SNL” starts.

“Saturday Night,” a Columbia Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language throughout, sexual references, some drug use and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 108 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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5 movies to learn about retirement and later life.

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LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 17: (EMBARGOED FOR PUBLICATION IN UK TABLOID NEWSPAPERS UNTIL 48 HOURS ... [+] AFTER CREATE DATE AND TIME. MANDATORY CREDIT PHOTO BY DAVE M. BENETT/WIREIMAGE REQUIRED) (L to R) Ronald Pickup, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, director John Madden and Lillete Dubey attend The Royal Film Performance and World Premiere of "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" at Odeon Leicester Square on February 17, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Dave M. Benett/WireImage)

Retirement is defined as “leaving one’s job or ceasing to work.” But it involves so much more than that. As I wrote in “ Retirement As A Death,” leaving one’s job is an emotional and psychological roller coaster, particularly when one is not prepared.

In order to retire successfully, it is important to realize what is happening and how to transition into a new life role. Research indicates it is critical to find a reason to get up in the morning—purpose and meaning. According to Dr. Becca Levy, author of Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live , people who have a purpose live seven and a half years longer . Staying relevant. Being engaged in life. Continuing to learn and especially intergenerational learning. All of this helps us live longer and healthier lives.

One way to learn how to retire and the issues that can accompany it is to watch the experiences of others. Roger Ebert, American film critic and authority, often said that film was an " empathy machine ," a way to step into someone else's shoes or experience a perspective that the real world could never allow.

According to Valerie Kalfrin , contributor to RogerEbert.com, movies, indeed, are empathy machines, but they’re also therapy. “As much as they open our minds to new experiences, sometimes we need their help to restore us, to tap into those places we’re otherwise not ready to go.”

Several organizations compose lists of movies targeted toward people in the second half of life. AARP hosts their annual Movies for Grownups Awards , which is one place you can look for movie reviews. For other movie recommendations, check out a list here , here , and here . We can learn how to prepare for this life transition from watching others tackle the journey before us.

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As a person who loves movies, I have many other movies I can recommend. The movies I am highlighting are five of my favorites that illustrate the necessary challenge of letting go in order to move onto what’s next.

About Schmidt

Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) has just retired from his management position at an insurance firm and he has lost his identity and purpose in life. There is a classic scene at his retirement party where the celebratory toast is made by the young person taking over Warren’s job. The movie takes us on a journey for Warren to find his new purpose for living. This is a great movie to watch if you are struggling to let go of your career, or if you have and aren’t sure what to do next.

Ben Whittaker (Robert Di Nero) is a 70-year-old former executive and a widower looking for something to do to fill his time. So, he applies to be an intern at a web start-up where his boss and colleagues are all much younger. The movie challenges the assumptions that different generations make about each other and illustrates how much we can learn from each other. I recommend this movie to people because of the intergenerational mentoring taking place. It is also relevant because many people are working past 65 either out of choice or necessity. They are either postponing retirement if possible or engaging in an encore career.

Tuesdays With Morrie

Based on a true story and book by the same title, journalist Mitch Albom discovers his favorite college professor has been diagnosed with ALS. Even though they lost touch, Albom is determined to visit Morrie. He learns so much from Morrie that Albom decides to visit him every Tuesday and record each conversation. While the topics they discuss are relevant to all ages and stages of life, they are particularly significant to people anticipating retirement.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Seven British travelers accept an invitation to a newly opened hotel in India. Each character has challenges, makes assumptions, holds stereotypes, and has preferences. Sometimes they are in agreement and often they are not. The movie illustrates how it is necessary to get out of one’s comfort zone in order to grow in interesting ways.

Young@Heart

This is a documentary about the Young@Heart Chorus in Northhampton, Massachusetts. The chorus is comprised of seniors who perform popular rock music by artists such as Coldplay. The documentary shows them performing at public venues and at prisons. The power of the film comes from getting to know the members and witnessing how they deal with the challenges of getting older.

A story about Young@Heart. After reading a review of this documentary, I was determined to see it while it was in town. Documentaries don’t stay at the theater for long. My 19-year-old son happened to be home from college for the summer and surprised me by saying he would go to the movie with me. I explained that it was a movie about older people in a singing group and he may not enjoy it. I explained that the movie was not going to involve action, romance, or comedy and was likely to be slow. He went with me anyway.

Interestingly, the documentary included action as in performance, romance in terms of a caring community, and comedy because it shows how valuable a sense of humor can be when facing challenges. While I loved the film because it reflected how elders were enjoying their lives through music, creativity, and community, I was curious as to what my son thought. “I really liked the movie,” he said. “It shows older people having fun, loving life, and caring for each other. It gives me hope.”

When we learn how to retire successfully, we can be role models and give other people hope that there are benefits to growing older and with wisdom.

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