Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Director Oliver Hermanus takes a decidedly old-school approach to his presentation of Living, which is based on a then-contemporary 1952 Japanese film called Ikiru (translation: To Live), which itself was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Both the opening and end credits are presented in a very retro style, making it feel as though we are watching a movie that actually was released in the 1950s.

My favorite thing about this film’s pedigree is its clearly conscientious connection to its Japanese heritage: the script was written by Nobel Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Japan but brought to Britain by his parents in 1960 when he was five. Ishiguro’s past novels, which were later adapted into screenplays, include the likes of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. With Living, Ishiguro has a meeting of both worlds: taking one interpretation of this story from his motherland, and marrying it with his actual lived experience to fashion a decidedly British tale.

As with those other stories, Living has a particular, soft-spoken tone, which makes it feel both unique and special. It also makes the peculiar achievement of being simultaneously melancholy and sweet.

When Living opens, we don’t immediately meet its protagonist, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy, at age 73 getting his first-ever Oscar nomination for this role), but rather four of his work subordinates, riding the train into London for work. The younger men discuss the stuffiness of Mr. Williams, if not his intimidation, and when we first see him, he is indeed stiff, subtly gruff, and single-minded in the pursuit of his daily tasks. It doesn’t become immediately clear why we then spend so much time in the office all of these men share in the Parks department, or indeed the amount of time spent on a small group of women pushing for the construction of a neighborhood playground and constantly getting referred back and forth between several departments in the building. Rest assured that every single thing experienced in this first scenes prove pertinent to the story later.

But first, we follow Mr. Williams briefly into his doctor’s office, where he gets grim news. We only learn at first that it is grim, and shortly thereafter witness him confessing to a stranger, the first person he tells that he is terminally ill.

What Living then makes clear it is about is precisely what the title suggests. Mr. Williams is a man who suddenly realizes he spent a lifetime on moving through his days like clockwork, and when it comes to actual living, he wants to get some of that in while he still has time. But, as he confesses to the stranger, “I don’t know how.”

Really, this movie is about Mr. Williams learning how—but, not in the way one might expect. Even within the limited time he has left, the process is gradual, sometimes even fumbling, but always subtle. Williams changes, but not in any particularly grand fashion. There is an almost jarring moment when Living cuts right to Williams’s funeral, with about half an hour left of the film to go. That doesn’t mean it’s the last we see of Mr. Williams, however, as we witness his colleagues gradually come to their own realizations of how Mr. Williams did indeed change in the end. As they discuss it, we see more of Mr. Williams in flashbacks, starting from the scene from which we cut to the funeral.

There’s some real skill in the writing here, very much justifying this film’s only other Oscar nomination, for Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s too bad the prognosticators say it is the least likely of the nominees to win in this category, when, upon reflection, I really feel this film has the best script among them. Mr. Williams finds himself viewing relationships in his life with new eyes, from the grown son (Barney Fishwick) he can’t bring himself to devastate with the news, to the young woman from his office (Aimee Lou Wood) with whom he becomes infatuated, not romantically, but with envy for her zeal for living. He makes mistakes along the way, some of which he learns from and some of which aren’t clear until after he dies.

We don’t learn the precise way he dies until a while after the funeral scene, but it all comes back to the aforementioned neighborhood playground. It’s not tragic or even especially sad, so much as it is deeply poetic, as is the entirety of Living.

Overall: B+