review by Max Baumgart and Shiva Shekhar

27 Jan 2023. On a Friday night, some TIC folks met again at  Cinecitta for movie night. This time, „Living“ was on play. „Living“ is a 2022 British drama film, directed by Oliver Hermanus.

According to Wikipedia, it is adapted from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro that itself was adapted from the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru directed by Akira Kurosawa.

That one again was inspired by the 1886 Russian novella „The Death of Ivan Ilyich“ by Leo Tolstoy. What a chain of adaptations! Shouldn’t that be in itself already a good indicator of a great movie? At least story wise.

The Movie

And indeed it was. Set in 1953 London, Dr. Williams, a bureaucrat in the county Public Works department finds out that he has uncurable cancer. Dr. Williams, played by the amazing Bill Nighy (also no wonder that he is nominated for an Oscar for his role), takes the diagnosis some way as an opportunity to reconsider his life.

Our Thoughts

We don’t want to spoil too much here, as it really is a great movie. The characters are lovely, the conversations as well and yet somehow we were left with the question after the movie – are we really able to commit to „living“ more or do we need a disastrous diagnosis at hand to escape life’s routines?

After the film, we gathered for drinks. Our next movie night is scheduled for Friday, February 17^th – come join us!

In the meantime, check out our movie review of The Gentlemen!