SMALL VICTORIES (LIVING)

There's a huge risk making a film like 'Living'.

Either you are very brave or really foolish to take on an adaptation of a movie classic like Akira Kurosawa's celebrated 'Ikiru'.

But to South African director Oliver Hermanus and writer Kazuro Ishiguro's credit, they pretty much rise to the challenge even if they don't quite manage to eclipse Kurosawa's masterpiece.

Taking the film's central concept of a career civil servant facing his mortality after being diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, Ishiguro makes a few additions and alterations to the original.

However the central message remains the same.

© Film 4

There is a certain logic to Ishihuro transposing Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni's original story from Japan to 1950s southern England.

Both societies have in the past had a reputation for people who button up their emotions while slavishly adhering to duty and convention.

Kurosawa's 1952 film was a contemporary piece, so there is a certain fascination with seeing Bill Nighy's bowler hatted and pinstripe suit wearing bureaucrat Rodney Williams wrestling with the same emotions as Takashi Shimura's mandarin Kanji Watanabe in a film set in London during the same period.

Hermanus, his cinematographer James D Ramsay, their costume designer Sandy Powell, production designer Helen Scott and set decorator Sarah Kane do a superb job recreating the postwar London of Lyons Tea Houses, smoky picturehouses and steam trains ferrying commuters in and out pf the city.

© Film 4

Film editor Chris Wyatt also wonderfully stitches these recreations together with digitally enhanced, archive footage of Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street from the time.

Everything is so lovingly recreated and given a 1950s sheen, you half expect popular comedians of the time like Arthur Askey and Tommy Trinder to pop up.

Hermanus and Ishiguro begin their adaptation with Alex Sharp's new London County Council employee, Peter Wakeling arriving at a packed train station on his first day at work.

Peter excitedly joins the masses of office workers in their bowler hats and neat pinstripe suits on the platform and immediately spots his new co-workers, Adrian Rawlins' Mr Middleton, Hubert Burton's Mr Rusbridger and Oliver Chris' Mr Hart.

© Film 4

Bound by convention, what little is said during the journey is polite and very clipped.

Wakeling is, however, guided by his co-workers through his first encounter with Bill Nighy's Mr Williams at their destination train station - ensuring there is the right level of deference to their boss.

In the office he is introduced to Aimee Lou Wood's bubbly Margaret Harris who is preparing to leave her post for a job in a Lyons Tea House.

The office is stuffy and banal, with Mr Williams and his co-workers shuffling planning application files around, putting them into in-trays, out trays or to do piles.

© Film 4

When confronted about an application for a playground by three disillusioned residents in a housing scheme from Chester Street, Lia Williams' Mrs Smith, Zoe Boyle's Mrs McMasters and Jessica Flood's Mrs Porter, Wakeling is sent to accompany them around County Hall on his first day.

It's a grim experience as their file is frustratingly sent back and forth between departments without ever being properly addressed.

Edging towards retirement, Mr Williams, a widower who Margaret dubs 'Mr Zombie,' goes about his work efficiently but without any real passion.

All that changes after he receives his cancer diagnosis.

© Film 4

At first, he contemplates suicide in a seaside resort but he cannot go through with it.

He falls in instead with Tom Burke's insomniac writer Mr Sutherland who he meets in a cafe and confides in.

Moved by Mr Williams' story, Sutherland takes him out instead for a night on the town - drinking, gambling, losing his bowler hat and replacing it with a trilby.

This evening culminates in a magical moment, with Mr Williams under the influence singing a Scottish folk song he loved as a child called 'The Rowan Tree' in a seedy bar.

© Film 4

The experience of his night on the tiles injects Mr Williams with a newfound enthusiasm for living what remains of his life to the full.

He subsequently bunks off work with Margaret Harris after running into her outside the office, taking her for an extended lunch in Fortnum's.

Living on borrowed time, he is keen to enjoy life and strikes a close bond with Margaret.

But can he also leave a lasting legacy before he dies?

© Film 4

'Living' is one of those beautifully executed period tales that Britain's film industry regularly produces and excels at.

Like '84 Charring Cross Road,' 'The End of the Affair' or 'Mrs Harris Goes To Paris,' its 1950s period detail is exquisitely recreated and the acting is top drawer.

Nighy's career best performance understandably dominates the movie.

The 73-year-old is everything you would wish him to be in a role that Anthony Hopkins might have tackled 15 years ago.

© Film 4

He's fastidious, amusing and he brilliantly handles the subtle unraveling of Mr Williams' stuffed shirt.

It's a performance that is fully deserving of its Best Actor Oscar nomination and it is so beautifully judged, you wouldn't begrudge him a victory in the category either - although that seems unlikely.

There's a wonderful sense of collegiality among Hermanus' cast too, with Nighy harmonising beautifully with Wood, Sharp, Burke, Rawlins, Burton, Chris and Anant Varman as the office clerk Mr Singh when he shares screen time with them.

Each cast member gels perfectly with one another even when Nighy is not there.

© Film 4

Rawlins, Burton, Chris and Sharp are excellent as their characters face the prospect of becoming replica versions of the Mr Williams they know from the office.

Aimee Lou Wood is particularly impressive as the vivacious Margaret who gradually starts to struggle with Mr Williams' unexpected change of character and the attention he lavishes upon her.

Barney Fishwick is wonderful too as Mr Williams' son Michael - particularly in a sequence where he tentatively tries to decipher the nature of his father's friendship with Margaret in a very hesitant conversation.

Alex Sharp also delivers a perfectly modulated supporting performance as Peter Wakeling, who never quite fits the mould of a by the book bureaucrat and who Mr Williams ultimately tries to influence.

© Film 4

Some critics have claimed Hermanus and Ishiguro are too respectful of Kurosawa's original film to the extent that 'Living' seems afraid to come out from under the shadow of 'Ikiru'.

But that is nonsense.

'Living' has the right amount of respect for a classic which is always going to be hard to eclipse.

Adapting the film to 1950s England is a big ask but they hit all the right notes with great subtlety and intelligence.

© Film 4

The England depicted in Hermanus' film is different from the England of today.

It is a pre-Thatcherite England of postwar recovery, of real ale in pubs and cream teas, of Cary Grant films, where there are stirrings of a youth culture that will eventually lead to The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones.

However Hermanus and Ishiguro know in this adaptation the central life lesson of Kurosawa's must remain the same.

Life is there to be lived.

© Film 4

However it is how you live it that ultimately matters.

'Living' embodies the very definition of a life affirming movie.

It should be seen because you'll find few films that can match it for its honesty and depth.

('Living' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on November 4, 2022)