Rent Living (2022)

Snoozing - Living review by Alphaville

Yet another snooze-fest drops off the seemingly endless conveyer belt of British dramas that lack even a scintilla of visual imagination. It’s the kind of film that’s advertised by the lead actor’s brilliant/unforgettable/remarkable (choose your own adjective) performance. Just plonk the camera in front of him/her and hey, we have a film. This one’s full of long, drawn-out, static conversations that drain it of any interest, whatever the subject matter. Naturally it has been nominated for awards, which is probably one reason why nothing improves in the British film “industry”.

A Tale of Final Redemption amid the dusty files - Living review by JG

I've seen this film twice. For me it's the best film I have seen for ages, being packed with gentle humanity. It evokes the spirit of its time, late forties - early fifties, so well. It has no extravagant flourishes just a steady exploration of character. Mr Williams's discovery of what he has for so long unconsciously craved is spelled out with quiet determination. Although so near the end of his life he discovers there is still time to make amends for his dullness and lack of achievement. His final few weeks are spent in a triumphant project which annuls this and he discovers powers he never knew he possessed leaving the playground as a tribute to his final efforts. His final journey, we might say, is something most of us will recognise in ourselves.

Interesting story but slow - Living review by SM

I loved all the 50s period detail in this with men going to work wearing bowler hats. (I can remember in the 60s some men were still wearing bowler hats as they travelled by train up to London). Bill Nighy gives a great peformance but at times I struggled to hear what he was saying and I wished I had put the subtitles on. It is a sweet story but I did find it slow going at times. A minor quibble: in the blub the central character is described as a civil servant but he works for the now defunct London County Council. Ttherefore he is a local government officer, not a civil servant.

Great period piece. - Living review by NS

This was well acted and the sets and clothes were spot on. However a bit of a gloomy film. Much of it relevant to today.

Thought provoking - Living review by MP

A faithful remake of Ikuri., with a classic performance by Bill Nighy, ably assisted by Aimee Lee Wood. Script by

Kazua Ishiguro portrays the ' buttoned up'

English demeanour perfectly.

I found it moving and highly watchable, provoking me to ruminate over what I would do knowing I had only 6 months to live.

Thought-provoklng - Living review by SB

This film is thought-provoking, but also irritating in a number of ways. The plot is simple: local government bureaucrat (not civil servant!) Bill Nighy gets terminal diagnosis and decides to live a little in his last six months and thereby reveals that he is not quite what his colleagues thought, ie Mr Zombie.

By coincidence, in my very early working days in a similar bureaucracy the team I was in had a similar situation but involving two men; a man who had cancer in January and was dead by May, and a team leader who appeared dessicated but had a hidden fire in the shape of his passion, quite well concealed, for a beautiful young married woman in our team. However, the man with cancer just stayed at home and faded away; and the team leader never got further than intimate little talks with her in his office. But nonetheless, Mr Williams' behaviour in the film is fairly believable except his initial absence from the office after the diagnosis; someone like him would have arranged leave and then gone away to 'find himself', in the modern jargon.

The film raises questions about 'what is living' but answers them rather unsatisfactorily since what he proceeds to do is so mundane (including singinmg in a bar and getting a playground past planning constraints). The office and its inhabitants are also shown as a sort of dead zone, whereas in reality such places were full of emotion and undercurrents, rivalry and jealousy, whatever the surface appearances.

So far as casting goes, Nighy's performance is good, and less mannered than sometimes occurs . He is far too old at 70+ for the role; someone in his role at the time (early 1950s) would have retired at 60. Aimee Lou Wood is good as the young colleague whom he confides in. The rest of the cast of colleagues and family etc are adequate.

But there are considerable irritations at the poor period detail, and other lapses. The likelihood that all these people working in one office in central London would all have travelled from the same railway station outside London would have been zero. The railway line filmed is certainly not a line into London; and although Waterloo station is shown, the route from there to County Hall (the declared setting) is done wrongly. Men in local government then would not have worn bowler hats, which were much more for men in the City; if he wore a hat at all, Williams would have worn a trilby (which he does acquire once he goes off the rails). There is far too little smoking, with just an occasional nod to the prevalent habit (to take one example, the office they work in would have been full of smoke).

In my view the film's lapses arise partly from imposing modern values on the film but also from having a director and writer who had no experience of England in 1950s.

In Short - A Delight - Living review by GI

An exquisite little film, sad yet heart warming and starring Bill Nighy, one of the best British actors of his generation. This is an adaptation of an Akira Kurosawa film, Ikiru (1952), and here set in London in the 1950s. A time of class, bowler hats and social manners that one can best describe as establishment fuddy-duddiness. Nighy is Mr William, a dull, bureaucrat who runs the small public works department of the London Council and has done all his adult life. He's a widower and estranged from his son and daughter in law but his life takes a sudden turn with a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Shocked he slowly begins to realise what a waste his life has been and sets out to change it in a relatively small but quite meaningful way. The narrative structure here is interesting and Nighy who carries the film so well is filmed as a lonely presence, almost ghostlike as he goes about his daily life. His work colleague, the ever cheery Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), is a contrast in whom he becomes infatuated albeit platonically and much to the horror of his family. Tom Burke has a small role as a bohemian writer who shows Mr Willliams a different side of life on one evening, which sets him on a path of personal redemption. This is a film about life and death and asks the inevitable question that little acts of kindness can be a huge achievement and shouldn't be left until death looms. A marvellous film and one to check out.