‘Living’ Review: Less Is More in This Exceptionally Understated Turn From Bill Nighy
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic“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.”Culturally specific as so much of “Ikiru” may be, its lessons translate quite well to midcentury British society, courtesy of Nobel-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who did the work of adapting it to 1953 London for director Oliver Hermanus (“Moffie”).
In “Living,” the dying man is played by Bill Nighy, whose unusually understated performance is all the more striking, given what a firecracker the actor remains well into his 70s — ever since stealing “Love Actually” out from under a much younger ensemble, really.
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.
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