Though one tries as much as possible to be objective in the evaluation of a film, the most careful of film critics is going to bring his/her own life experiences, prejudices, and biases into any review. So readers need to understand that in this case, my own life experiences colour my review of the truly wonderful film Living.
With a script by Kazuo Kurosawa, based squarely and faithfully on Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Ikiru (1952), Living tells the story of a man who finds himself with only a few months to live. This adaptation of the story, replete with well-positioned cultural references, is firmly set in Britain of the early Fifties.
As such it reveals the protagonist, Mr. Williams, a bureaucrat working for the City of London and firmly entrenched in the quite rigid class structure of the time. With his conventional bowler hat and carrying his furled umbrella and The Times – required reading on the morning train commute – he sets off daily to his office. There he presides over a group of subservient bureaucrats whose main job comes down to slowing the processes of local government and tying it up with meaningless red tape. It’s a stultifying and meaningless existence, one which is unquestioned by its participants.
In a similar vein, Mr. Williams returns each night to his home which he shares with his son and daughter-in-law, who are equally unquestioning of their grey and structured upper-middle-class existence. Nowhere is this more tellingly revealed than in a scene in which the three awkwardly share dinner. These interactions will remind many of the devastating and hilarious portrayal of a uniquely British middle-class world in Ionesco’s one-act play The Bald Soprano.
Williams’ world, however, begins to be shattered when his doctor informs him that he has stomach cancer and only six months to live. Williams, despite his expected outward “stiff upper lip” attitude towards tragedy, realizes that he has not really lived or done anything meaningful as he led his life of structured conformity. The realization causes him to break the rules and engage in hitherto unthinkable, though for those of a lower class, perfectly respectable activities. Moreover, he is also given one chance to do something worthwhile.
The film is brilliantly directed by Oliver Hermanus and is essentially a surprisingly structured allegory of Britain’s move towards a more classless society (a process which is still underway). Of course, all societies develop a class structure, usually determined by wealth, though in Britain family rank generally dictated one’s position in society. To a large extent that has disappeared and there appears to be a greater opportunity for anyone to rise in society. Here, however, the film shows a class-conscious Britain before the Mods and the Rockers, before Carnaby Street, and before the Beatles. Things were certainly destined to change.
In Living, Britain’s class distinctions of the time are subtly indicated by still other cultural references when Williams escorts a young woman, a former underling, to a Lyons Corner House, one of a chain of impeccably respectable restaurants and tea rooms which was beyond the reach of my parents’ income – my father was a mailman.
To further emphasize the class distinction, a later foray to Fortnum and Mason’s indicates a world above even that of the Lyons Corner House. (Today Fortnum’s on Piccadilly is no longer the lavish emporium it once was, but it’s still hardly a place for most people to do their family grocery shopping. As I say, Britain is still not a classless society.)
That the world of Mr. Williams was beginning to fracture is also culturally referenced with a brief encounter with an unorthodox young would-be playwright. This is clearly a reminder of the dizzying excitement and enthusiasm we felt when London’s West End was taken by storm by the Angry Young Men, such as Osborne and Wesker. Their plays, lauded by the equally non-conformist critic Kenneth Tynan, marked the early stirrings of youth in rebellion.
Indeed, as Living unfolds, it is clearly a gentle account of a quiet start to revolution. Williams’ journey and attempt to find meaning in what he realizes has been a largely meaningless life is, especially for those who actually experienced it, a lovely and ultimately moving revisiting of the past – and a wish that somehow that past could have resulted in something different.
The wistful yearning for a more meaningful (and, for Williams a much more enjoyable) past conveys the hope that there can be something more worthwhile in the world, as expressed in the hauntingly beautiful song The Rowan Tree, which features prominently in the movie.
Just how Williams finds some kind of redemption is for viewers to discover for themselves. It is a rewarding, thoughtful journey, firmly anchored in the marvellous Bill Nighy’s memorable, gracious, and subtle performance as Williams.
Even for those unfamiliar with Britain of the Fifties, it will be a wake-up call to engage while one can in a worthwhile life, founded on meaningful relationships and activity.
I must remind the reader of the personal bias with which I viewed the film. Having travelled around the sun some 88 times, Living provided me with a forceful and superbly realized hint at my own past experience. As such, it also helped me to remember the excitement I felt in the late Fifties when, virtually on a whim, I left what I perceived as a suffocatingly grey post-war Britain and emigrated to what for me was the refreshingly open and liberating world of Vancouver. And it reminded me that even given that great opportunity, I too, like Williams, failed to take advantage of all that life offered me. At the end of Living, I was both happy to have enjoyed so much of my own life journey, and regretful that I had not made it more meaningful.
One hopes that others, especially the young, will be able to discover in Living an exquisite and gentle challenge to evaluate what one does with the enormous gift we are given by being born into a world of dazzling choice. One doesn’t have to be old for this to be relevant.
Living is available on various streaming services in Canada.
