Movies

I have been absent from the blogosphere for a while – what’s that you say? It’s three weeks!  Well, let me tell you what I have been doing apart from socialising.

I belong to our local branch of Probus.  On the second Wednesday of the month, a group of us go to a local bijoux theatre for Sneak Peek.  

At Sneak Peek (on every Wednesday and for $12 one sees a film and has coffee and cake, good value, eh? ) we choose the Wednesday after our monthly meeting. The movies are those about to be released and so we get an early viewing. 

This week’s movie was Living starring Bill Nighy.

Do you know Henry Thoreau’s quote The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.”  

Well, the character Bill Nighy plays in this movie is the epitome of that. 

Rodney Williams is a senior London County Council bureaucrat in 1953 London. He sits at his desk surrounded by high piles of paperwork and seems uninspired.  Overwhelmed at work and lonely at home, his life takes a heart-breaking turn when a medical diagnosis tells him his time is short. Pondering on how to use the remaining years, he searches for meaning until a simple revelation gives him a purpose to create a legacy for the next generation.

A group of women, petition the council to have a World War II bomb site redeveloped into a children’s playground. They are sent with their petition from department to department but to no avail. Mr Williams receives the petition and adds it to his pile of paperwork, making clear to his colleagues his intention to take no further action.

Realizing the best way to spend his remaining time is to do some good, Williams rallies his office to construct the children’s playground. Though he is able to push the process through by standing up to his colleagues and superiors, he dies shortly after construction is finished. 

A moving, thought inspiring film that left me pondering on how I plan to spend the rest of my life. 

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