Living

AroView: An exquisite period drama that brings out the best in Kurosawa’s 1952 classic ‘Ikiru’, not least through Bill Nighy’s performance as a lifelong public servant and widower whose terminal cancer diagnosis gives him a renewed lease on life.

The results are generously funny and touching thanks to impeccable direction, delightful dialogue (courtesy of Kazuo Ishiguro), and visual design and sound elements just as crisp and refined. For our money, this is easily the best of recent British crowd-pleasers about late-life experience and will likely figure in many best-of-the-year lists to come.

“It’s beauty feels thrillingly natural, and its considerable emotional power is honestly earned.” ~Robbie Collin, The Telegraph

“Bill Nighy brings a quiet dignity to the role of Mr Williams, an anchor of buttoned-up solidity in an old-fashioned weepie which captures the lush sentimental swirl of the original while also evoking a distinctive sense of backdrop and period.” ~Wendy Ide, Screen Daily