The British actor was nominated for best actor at the Oscars for his role in this 50s-set drama written by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.
abc.net.au/news/living-review-bill-nighy-british-drama-movie-aimee-lou-wood/102094392Akira Kurosawa has provided the basis for so much of contemporary film that remakes of the Japanese director's work could sustain their own film festival – or at least an. It's a list that traverses borders of both genre and country; an encyclopedia of cinema in miniature.
In Ikiru, the Japanese screen legend Takashi Shimura stars as Mr Watanabe, a joyless bureaucrat. In Living, he becomes Mr Williams, played in an Oscar-nominated turn by Bill Nighy.With a screenplay by Japanese British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, Living transposes Kurosawa's Tokyo setting to a storybook version of mid-century London: a swarm of bowler hats and black cabs hurrying down cobblestoned streets pockmarked with reminders of the war.
There's a militaristic rigidity to it all. When a new hire, Mr Wakeling , dares disrupt the ritual during a morning commute, his co-workers impress on him the rules of the routine: Respect the silence of the train station and always stay a few steps behind Mr Williams to allow him his priceless solitude.
Wakeling's dejection – having witnessed firsthand these tortuous office politics – is matched only by Williams's sheer indifference, any glimmer of tenderness long ago eroded by a career in the public service. Nighy's character here is the exact inverse of his breakout role in Love Actually: Billy Mack, the rabble-rousing rockstar, complete with silver chain and popped collar.
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