The movie LIVING has changed the way I look at life and living. I saw it on Netflix. It’s probably still on for you to watch. Directed by Oliver Hermanus, it’s a film of extraordinarily deep meaning. The screenplay is by Kazuo Ishiguro and the movie is adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s film IKIRU. He is one of my favourite auteurs.
Bill Nighy plays Rodney Williams, a senior London County Council bureaucrat, a man with piles of paper work on his desk. Procrastination in dealing with projects becomes a way of life for Williams who heads a public works department.
Worthy appeals by a group of women for redeveloping a World War II empty bombsite into a children’s play area make the rounds from department to department, are ignored and shelved by Williams again and again. The employees in his department follows his lead and nothing gets done. The man is immersed in the boring exact routines of his daily existence.
Then comes a big jolt. Williams is thunderstruck when he receives a diagnosis of his terminal cancer. In deep thought, he doesn’t share this information with anyone, not even with his son and his daughter in law. Mr. William ponders on this, getting deeper and deeper into his inner self as the clock ticks by. He tries drinking, partying, socialising. He absents himself from his routine office life. The world of his mind is in an endless flux.
Slowly resolving his inner turmoil, Wiliams comes back to his duties and looks at everything in a new and changed perspective. The children’s park project that he had earlier shelved becomes the focus of his life. Undeterred by objections put up by various departments, he finally gets the approval and makes the children’s park a reality, delighting those women and children. The park goes on to better the lives of people around it even after Williams dies shortly after it is built.
Bill Nighy’s restrained acting style as he plays the film’s protagonist with quiet pathos portrays the intense feelings of a man who knows his days are numbered. The change in his thinking as he realigns the meaning of life and LIVING is the essence of this film. A superbly made film, Living is surely to make anyone rethink how they are living their own lives and shift their perspectives in the light of their own limited time on Earth and how meaningful they can make their lifetime.
Indrani Bose is a freelance trainer. Her association with ISABS goes back to 1993 November when she attended her first lab. Thereafter, she completed the Advanced Lab in Human Process and Phase 1 and 2 of professional development towards becoming a full professional member.