Living

2022 · United Kingdom · 102 min

Director: Oliver Hermanus
Screenplay: Kazuo Ishiguro
Producer: Elizabeth Karlsen
Music: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
Cinematography: Jamie Ramsay
Based on: Ikiru

Awards: · 1 nominations

What the critics say

94 % Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews81 Metacritic /100

Cast

Bill Nighy

Tom Burke

Alex Sharp

Aimee Lou Wood

Rosie Sansom

What it is about

London, 1953. Rodney Williams, a veteran bureaucrat at the London County Council, has spent decades in a grey routine of files and paperwork. One day he receives a diagnosis that shifts his outlook: his time is short. As he tries to absorb the news without telling his family, he crosses paths with a former junior colleague and an insomniac writer who draw him into experiences he had not planned. Gradually, he begins to wonder what he can still do with the few weeks he has left.

How it was made

The project was announced in October 2020, with Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood attached to star and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro writing the screenplay. Ishiguro moves the story of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952), itself inspired by Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, to postwar England. Principal photography began in the UK in June 2021, with Alex Sharp and Tom Burke joining the cast. London's County Hall provided the backdrop, and the film was co-financed through the County Hall Arts charity. The score was composed by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch and the cinematography is by Jamie Ramsay.

Reception and legacy

The film was received positively overall: on Rotten Tomatoes, 94 percent of the 145 reviews collected are favourable, and Nighy's performance drew particular praise. Critic Brian Tallerico highlighted the sensitivity of the adaptation and Ishiguro's screenplay. At the 95th Academy Awards it earned two nominations, Best Actor for Nighy and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ishiguro. After its premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights for much of the world.