Bill Nighy, an Oscar-winning bureaucrat in a wonderfully melancholy drama – Corriere.it

The idea came to the writer Kazuo Ishiguro. Getting hands on with an Akira Kurosawa classic, Ikiru (Living), transferring the story from Tokyo to London without changing the era, the fifties, and modeling the role of the protagonist — a civil servant grayed who wakes up from resignation after an ominous diagnosis — about Bill Nighy.
Now thanks to
«Living»
by Olivier Hermanus, in theaters on 23 December with Circuito cinema, the great actor at 73 is one of the top names of the awards season: nominated as best actor at the Golden Globes, it could be an encore Oscars.

Master of
understatements
the person concerned jokes with the “Courier”. «The Oscar? I’m glad you talk about it, sure. The funny thing is that I often get someone to congratulate me on one statuette which I have never won. And when I say it, they answer me: of course you won it. As some call me Sirthey think he was named knight by the Queen. I am very thankful for that and happy for the film. It’s always difficult for independent works.”

It all started, he says, one evening. “Dinner with my producer friends Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen e Ishiguro with his wife Lona. Before leaving us he told me: “We know what your next film should be”. A few weeks later I got the film script. The message is that you can live a meaningful life without turning the world upside down leaving the mark». Like the protagonist, Mr Williams. «An official who closed in his mourning after the wife’s death. And he’s adapted to the philosophy of the bureaucratic institution he works for, designed for procrastination, to ensure things don’t get done. The meeting with the young colleague Margaret, played by the wonderful Aimee Lou Wood, outspoken and open to life, unlocks it. And she makes him understand that, in his small way, he can do the difference».

Kurosawa’s Japan has become Ishiguro & Nighy’s England. «He’s right Kazuo, there’s a lot in common. I’ve been there and stayed very impressed from good manners and kindness, intended as a principle. When instead the formalism is excessive, like in the 1950s in England, even more than in Great Britain, I think it can become unhealthy: people they suppress everythingincluding their feelings.

He knows he is considered a concentrate of
englishness. “It’s not exactly how I see myself, but I understand.” How does he know that of his long career between theater, TV, cinema, with directors such as Blake Edwards, John Madden, Fernando Meirelles even before the “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Harry Potter”popularity came to him thanks to
“Love Actually”
by friend Richard Curtis. «With the role of Billy Mack. I have an excellent relationship with that film, many people use it even in difficult moments, others repeat the joke to me: “Guys, don’t buy drugs, become a rockstar, people will give them to you for free.” The only critical moments are if I cross a hen party. Being chased by young women who scream at you to undress is not dignified”.