Living (2022 film)

Living is a 2022 film about a humorless bureaucrat in 1950s London who decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis.

Directed by Oliver Hermanus. Written by Kazuo Ishiguro, based on the 1952 film Ikiru, written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni.

It's never too late to start.taglines

Mr. Rodney Williams

• I don't have time to get angry.

• I wonder if you ever stop on the way home and watch the children playing. In the street, or in the yard. And when the time comes and their mothers call them in, they're often reluctant. They, they get a little contrary. But that's as it should be. Far better than to be the child you occasionally see, he's sitting by himself in the corner not taking part, not happy, not unhappy. Merely waiting for his mother to call him in. I've become afraid that I might end up like that child. And I so very much do not wish to do so.

• We can keep it here for now. It will do no harm.

• [letter to Peter Wakeling] I wonder, Mr. Wakeling, if I may now turn to matters you may consider more personal. I have no wish to belittle our playground... but I put it to you that it was, all the same, a small thing. And that it will, before long go the way of most small things. It may fall into disrepair, or be superseded by some grander scheme. To speak plainly, we can not assume to have erected a lasting monument. Should there come days when it's no longer clear to you to what end you are directing your daily efforts, when the sheer grind of it all threatens to reduce you to the kind of state in which I so long existed, I urge you then to recall our little playground and the modest satisfaction that became our due upon its completion.

• How did it happen? I fancy it just crept up on me. Just one day preceding the next. A small wonder I didn't notice... what I was becoming. And then I looked at you. And I remembered... what it was like to be alive like that.

• When the time comes, when my Maker calls me...

Mr. Middleton

• Let's pledge to learn from his example, this lesson he set before us. Let's vow never again to shy away from our responsibilities. Never again to push things under the carpet.

Mr. Rusbridger

• Don't worry, old chap. This time of morning it's a kind of rule: Not too much fun and laughter. Rather like church.

Fiona Williams

• There was a time when what one did in London stayed in London, but these days half of the street works in London.

Dialogue

Michael Williams: Miss Harris... there was something I wished to ask you.

Margaret Harris: Of course.

Michael Williams: There's something I, I can't quite, erm... Did my father know he was ill? That he was dying?

Margaret Harris: I don't know what... I don't know what to say.

Michael Williams: Because if he knew... and he told you... You see what I mean? Why wouldn't he tell me?

Margaret Harris: Well... Perhaps he...

Michael Williams: If he'd just told me... I'd never have let him leave us like that. In all that cold.

Margaret Harris: I'm sorry.

Michael Williams: Thank you Miss Harris.

Taglines

• It's never too late to start.

• An ordinary man discovers the extraordinary key to life.

Cast

• Bill Nighy - Mr. Rodney Williams
• Aimee Lou Wood - Miss Margaret Harris
• Alex Sharp - Mr. Peter Wakeling
• Tom Burke - Mr. Sutherland
• Adrian Rawlins - Mr. Middleton
• Hubert Burton - Mr. Rusbridger
• Oliver Chris - Mr. Hart
• Michael Cochrane - Sir James
• Anant Varman - Mr. Singh
• Zoe Boyle - Mrs. McMasters
• Lia Williams - Mrs. Smith
• Jessica Flood - Mrs. Porter
• Patsy Ferran - Fiona Williams
• Barney Fishwick - Michael Williams
• Nichola McAuliffe - Mrs. Blake

External links

• Living (2022 film) quotes at the Internet Movie Database