Besides Nighy and a script by Ishiguro, what prompted me to watch this film was its reflecting of themes dealt with by Tolstoy in his Ivan Ilyich story.
The British film “Living” came out last year and featured Bill Nighy, who was delightful as the once-great rock star Billy Mack in “Love Actually” (2003). The new offering is also notable for being an adaptation of the 1952 classic “Ikiru,” by Japan’s most famous director, Akira Kurosawa, which itself is loosely based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Moreover, the “Living” filmscript was written by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Besides Nighy and a script by Ishiguro, what prompted me to watch this film (now available on Netflix) was its reflecting of themes dealt with by Tolstoy in his Ivan Ilyich story. It has long been one of my favorites,
More than a dozen years ago I wrote about it in “Goals, Values, and Wisdom: Unsolicited Advice to Young College Students.” Like “Living,” Tolstoy’s story deals with a man who realizes he will soon die and regrets how he has lived much of his life. In the essay I pointed out that reading the novella could be valuable for college students because it could say to them: “Beware of leading an unexamined life, of being a slave to convention, advertisers, or public opinion, of being too self-centered, of pursuing materialist dreams. Awake to the importance of empathy, truth, honesty, justice, peace, beauty, compassion, humility, tolerance, and a passion for life and its wonders. . . . Don’t waste all your life, or like Ivan Ilyich almost all of it, pursing false idols like money, fame, or recognition. Awake to the possibilities before you. You are still young and college offers you a wonderful opportunity to get your life off on the right track.”
Like Ivan Ilyich, Nighy’s character, Mr. Williams, does not have long to live—“The doctors have given me six months, eight or nine at a stretch.” (Film quotes are taken from the filmscript, but only when they are essentially the same as in the actual film.) Also like Ivan, before either realized death soon awaited him, Williams had become a insensitive bureaucrat--about Ivan, Tolstoy wrote that in dealing with petitioners “the thing was to exclude everything fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular course of official business.”
When three ladies came to petition the London department Williams heads, Public Works, requesting that a small playground be built to replace a ruined area that the Germans had bombed in World War II, he instructs that they be told: “Your letter and your petition are very well presented. . . . However you must first take it to Parks and Recreation on the third floor.” Their previous objection—“We were elsewhere in this building all yesterday and kept waiting hour upon hour. First at Planning, then at Parks, then at Cleansing and Sewage. Then just before closing yesterday, the gentleman said we were to bring this to you”—does little good.
Shortly after this encounter, Williams goes to the doctor and receives the bad news that he has less than a year to live. And like Tolstoy’s Ivan, though in a different way, Williams, decides to live differently before he dies. His first attempt is to withdraw “almost half” of his “life’s savings,” go to a popular seaside resort town, and try to enjoy himself, “to live a little.” But as he tells Sutherland (Tom Burke), a man he meets there, “I realise I don’t know how.”
Before he and Sutherland go out drinking and enjoying entertainment (including a striptease), Williams offers his companion several bottles of sleeping pills—Sutherland had mentioned he had trouble sleeping. Williams tells him, “I did think about it [suicide]. But I don’t have it in me.”
During their night of drinking—the script says the two men are drunk—Williams asks a piano player in a bar if he knows the song “The Rowan Tree.” The piano man responds, “Old Scottish song.” Williams answers “yes,” and that both he and his “late wife” have some Scotch in them. (Earlier in the film we have learned that his wife had died when their sole child, Michael, was only five, and he never remarried.)
As the song is played, Williams sings the words. They stress the beauty of the tree and are nostalgic—“My mother, Oh, I see her still, She smiled our sports to see, Wi’ little Jeanie on her lap, And Jamie at her knee.” Later on, near the very end of the film and shortly before his death, he sings the song again, sitting on a park swing at night as snow flakes come down upon him. He is seen by a constable walking his beat, who recalls that “he looked so . . . so happy.” And the constable is told by one of Williams’ subordinates, “I believe you were quite right. He was happy when you saw him. Perhaps as happy as he'd ever been in his life.”
In an interview, script writer Ishiguro talked about the importance of the song to the film—he also mentions what a “great singer” Nighy is. To me, the significance of the song being sung twice—and with great affection—is the importance of beauty in our lives. My essay regarding “unsolicited advice” (mentioned above) is a plea to college students not to limit themselves to “career” preparation, to vocational training, and includes the following sentence, “Take courses in literature, music, and art that will help you appreciate beauty more.” One of gifts of discovering he will soon die is that Williams comes to realize something that such nearness can, but often does not, stimulate—the importance of beauty.
Except for his chance to sing “The Rowan Tree,” Williams’ drinking night still leaves him thirsting for more from life. He discovers that “more” by befriending a young woman who had worked for him, Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), or “Miss Harris” as he usually addresses her—her earlier nickname for him was Mr. Zombie.
Coincidentally, earlier this year I came across an article that referenced the book The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly: Life Wisdom from Someone Who Will (Probably) Die Before You. The article’s author, Jancee Dunn, then called the book’s author, Margareta Magnusson (age 86), and received “her top three tips” for “aging exuberantly.” The second one was, “Surround yourself with the young. This is Magnussen’s simple definition of happiness: being around young people. Not only do they supply fresh ideas and perspectives, she said, but hearing about their plans and prospects ‘is a way to stay in tune with the young person you yourself were at some point.’”
This advice coincides well with Williams’ experience in “Living.” He begins taking Miss Harris out to eat and drink, to see a film, to walk around. On one occasion he tells her:
I wasn’t always . . . Mr Zombie. When my wife was with me, for instance. Then later, all the time Michael was growing up. I wasn’t Mr Zombie at all then. . . . How did it happen? I fancy it crept up on me. The days proceeding one after the next. Each with their little burdens and defeats. Small wonder I didn’t notice what I was becoming. But then I looked at you and remembered. What it was like, to be alive like that . . . . I wonder if you ever stop on your way home and watch the children playing. In the street, in the yard. Balls, cowboys, whatever. Always so full of life. And when the time comes and their mothers call them in, they’re often reluctant, get a little contrary. Well, that’s as it should be. Far better that than be the child you occasionally see, sitting by himself in a corner. Not taking part, not happy, not unhappy. Merely waiting for his mother to call him in. Now I’ve become rather afraid I might end up like that little fellow and . . . and I so very much wish not to do so.
He also tells her that he has cancer and not long to live and that he admires not just her youth, but her “appetite for life,” her making “everything jolly and gay.” He adds that he thought, “If only to be alive like that, even for one day. And I suppose I hoped you might show me. Teach me how to be like you.”
She objects that she’s “just an ordinary person” who possesses “no such special quality.” And she’s right to suggest that perhaps he’s over evaluating her. In a recent article, Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote, “Nearly one out of every three teenagers in America reported that the state of their mental health was poor. Two out of every five teenagers felt persistently sad or hopeless.” Thus, just like old age, so too youth should not be idolized. Both stages have their pluses and minuses. But when one sees the energy and idealism of someone like Sweden’s Greta Thunberg regarding the dangers of climate change, it is appropriate to admire those qualities more characteristic of youth. (In the case of Mr. Williams and Miss Harris, the fact that she is a pleasant and sympathetic young woman is also relevant.)
Finally, there is one final step that Mr. Williams takes before he dies. Soon after the above conversation with Miss Harris he returns to his Public Works office fired up to accomplish the task he had earlier resisted—creating a small park where bombed-out rubble now existed. And by patiently but persistently wrestling through bureaucratic hurdles he succeeds. About the ladies who presented the original petition, Williams’ successor says, “But they've quite convinced themselves Mr Williams built that playground entirely by himself.”
Although not literally true, the ladies were correct to assume that without his newfound energy and determination, the park would have never been built. Near the end of the film, as he sings for a second time “The Rowan Tree” and is “perhaps as happy as he'd ever been in his life,” it is in one of that very same park’s swings that he sits.
His accomplishment of this final task he sets himself reminds me of a quote from Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”: “You and I are old; / old age hath yet his honour and his toil; / Death closes all: but something ere the end, / Some work of noble note, may yet be done.”
