Living (2022)

We begin our journey at a train station, where a new employee Peter joins his coworkers in matching suits and hats. He is introduced to an entrenched bureaucracy, stifling and alienating.

The boss, Williams (Bill Nighy), is ossified in his routine of stalling permits for a playground – “We can keep it here for now. It’ll do no harm.” – until a terminal diagnosis jolts him.

At home, Williams sits alone in the dark, lost in time, immersed in memories of his young son and late wife. He tries to talk to his son, but his son has his own life to lead, and he cannot cross the chasm between them. The emotions run deep. Loss. Grief. Regret. Loneliness that pierces the soul. It is religious.

Williams faces death and finds that he is not living. Desperately, he tells a stranger about his diagnosis, gets a new hat, and goes partying, but the melancholy returns. He sings The Rowan Tree and continues to be trapped in memory.

A young employee, Margaret, finds him, and he latches on to her as if drowning. They walk in a lush park, vibrant and green. He gets her a rabbit stuffie. But the happiness is fleeting. He confesses: “If only to be alive like you, even for one day. And I suppose I hoped you might show me. Teach me how to be like you.” “I was like you once… 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. 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. When the time comes, when my Maker calls me…”

Suddenly he understands what to do.

At his funeral, his coworkers discuss how he personally delivered the playground permits:

• “Why don’t I wait here while you check those entries?”
• “Looked them in the face. Thanked them all. Secretaries, everyone.”
• “Please excuse me. But I beg you to reconsider. I beg you.”

He leaves an envelope for Peter saying that to live is to celebrate and to care for people.

“If I may now turn to matters more personal. I have no wish to belittle our playground… but I put it to you 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 It may fall into disrepair, or be superseded by some grander scheme.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 cannot assume to have erected a lasting monument. Should there come days when it is no longer clear 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.”

Alone in the playground he built, Williams sits in the swing, a child again.