Liv­ing

Aman should nev­er be forced to under­play the final moments of his life. The news of sud­den ill­ness sure­ly deserve the high­est lev­el of dra­ma and despair, as time begins to slip through your fin­gers. Yet there is such pierc­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in the del­i­ca­cy with which Bill Nighy plays Mr Williams, a Big Smoke pen­cil push­er forced to reck­on with what life real­ly means before he draws his final breath.

He’s not the first nor will he be the last man to reck­on with his mor­tal­i­ty, and it’s a tall task to even con­sid­er retelling the sto­ry first put to screen by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa in 1952 with Ikiru, itself based on Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novel­la ​‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’. So Liv­ing, direct­ed by South African film­mak­er Oliv­er Her­manus and with a screen­play by Kazuo Ishig­uro, doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly shine by telling a peer­less sto­ry – but the grace with which it is told and played is breathtaking.

Nighy’s per­for­mance is so gen­tle and self­less that, despite the bus­tle of this 1950s metrop­o­lis orbit­ing around his life, so much of the film spot­lights the young pro­fes­sion­als learn­ing from his wis­dom and some­how try­ing to under­stand that life ends and keeps mov­ing at the same time. Aimee Lou Wood, star of Net­flix com­e­dy series Sex Edu­ca­tion, infus­es great sen­si­tiv­i­ty into the male-heavy office as Mar­garet. There is won­der in her eyes as a knicker­bock­er glo­ry is laid down for her plea­sure, stand­ing out as one of the most beau­ti­ful details in a film full of them.

Alex Sharp and Tom Burke, too, deliv­er fine work as col­leagues and appren­tices of Williams, yet this is Nighy’s film and his impact is felt even when he’s nowhere to be seen. But when he is, it’s all the more stun­ning, not least down to cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Jamie D Ramsay’s strik­ing visu­als which pay homage to ​’50s melo­dra­mas, with colours so vivid it feels like it’s too good to be true and will snap back to real­i­ty at any moment. The design of Liv­ing adds so much love and pain to Williams’ sto­ry, with Emi­lie Levienaise-Farrouch’s impres­sion­is­tic orches­tral bol­ster­ing things fur­ther as it offers nods to count­less pio­neer­ing clas­si­cal musi­cians. It’s in the craft where so much of the film’s beau­ty lies: lived-in yet sin­gu­lar, famil­iar but qui­et­ly spectacular.

The ques­tion of what it means to be alive has fas­ci­nat­ed count­less artists, with so many fail­ing to cap­ture the pre­cious and often inde­scrib­able joy of those fleet­ing moments we’re all chas­ing after. Liv­ing, some­how, does it. Not by rein­vent­ing the con­cept of mor­tal­i­ty nor by send­ing some­one off in a fire­work or puff of smoke. By qui­et­ly tak­ing a step back, tak­ing it all in, and find­ing mag­ic in every person’s being. And when it’s time – by going gracefully.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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