Living (2022)
(Oliver Hermanus, UK 2022, 102 min., DCP)
Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day, adapted the original screenplay for Ikiru (which kicked off this series) and transposed it to 1953 London. Bill Nighy plays Rodney Williams, a county bureaucrat who plugs away at his job without an extraneous or divergent thought. When he receives a terminal diagnosis, he begins thinking more about death, and through the process, more about life. He starts to act outside his norms and his work becomes less important until he discovers a project to champion and guide through the bureaucratic process. Ishiguro draws similarities between the formality of Japanese society at the time and the manners of the English “gentleman” in the post-war period depicted in The Spirit of ‘45. Both Ishiguro and Nighy were nominated for Academy Awards for their work on the film.