Living

Mr. Williams, a civil servant in 1950s London, learns he is dying and tries to push one small public good through an office built to delay it. Hermanus remakes Kurosawa’s Ikiru in bowler hats. Bill Nighy plays Williams as a man who has been quiet for so long that a decision looks like a personality. Aimee Lou Wood is the young colleague who still talks about the work as if it could happen. The Sony Pictures Classics trailer is the playground. The film is the file he refuses to lose.