Avis des critiques

[Bill Nighy] indisputably delivers his greatest and most sublime performance... But Living is above all a work of dramatic writing at the highest level, as well as a master class in how to adapt—and improve!—a fine original screenplay from one cultural setting to another.

The benefit of Ishiguro’s fidelity to Kurosawa’s original story is that its profoundly existential themes still come through, namely its larger concern with how a person defines their life and makes meaning out of it. And Nighy’s performance takes the material the rest of the way.

Well acted and visually striking, Living is a wonderful showpiece for Nighy, who is as affecting as you’ve ever seen him.

Everything from the opening credits to an immaculate script by Ishiguro to impeccable supporting turns from Tom Burke and Aimee Lou Wood make this feel like one of the rare occasions where everything aligns just right. An absolutely gorgeous, heartbreaking piece of work.

Sentimental but never cloying, Living is an elegant elegy, a reminder to take little in life for granted—and to forgive the times when that lesson gets overlooked.

Aimee Lou Wood is a standout, breathing life into both the lead character and the film as a whole. Alex Sharp and Tom Burke also impress within the scenes they’re given. That said, Living begins and ends with Nighy.

The language of the film is found not in the thoughtfully restrained dialogue Ishiguro has written—which accurately reflects the collective repression of polite British society—but in the images Hermanus, cinematographer Jamie Ramsay, and editor Chris Wyatt have constructed.

While capturing the distinct monotony of the working middle class, Hermanus also allows for the drama to play out in a decidedly natural progression. That may test some viewers’ patience, but it provides a welcome arena for his actors to deliver some truly superb performances. In many ways, that begins and ends with Nighy.

“Living” is undeniably moving, although perhaps not to the same degree that Kurosawa achieved, in part because Ishiguro is so committed to the British art of biting one’s tongue and swallowing one’s emotions. That is to say, Ishiguro has aligned “Ikiru” with his best-known work, “The Remains of the Day.”

[Living's] true highlight is the understated performance of Aimee Lou Wood, whose effervescent spark brings some light to an otherwise slow-pulse story, supported by a true-to-form performance from Nighy.

The [film's] deliberate airlessness... works well initially, but as Nighy has less screen time and the film slips into considerations of the switch in Williams' life in the past tense, it drifts towards the stagey... By the end, there's a lingering admiration for the craft and moody melancholy but the deeper emotions remain at arm's length.

Deeply felt, beautifully acted... [Living is] a gentle, exquisitely sad film.