The Living proof Britain was once a dignified place

I HAVE found it hard to start going to the cinema again, something I used to love but which I now rarely do. I think the main reason is that there have been so few films I have actively wanted to see, or even try to see. But last week I saw Living, a small, modest but powerful film featuring that lovable actor Bill Nighy, left.

And I do not think it would have been half so good seen from the sofa. Set in the very early 1950s, and based on a Japanese classic movie, it is very quiet and restrained, portraying a world when we British were much more like the Japanese in our formality and elaborate manners. The price of admission is justified by the opening credits alone – archive colour film of the London of almost 70 years ago, red buses among great dark buildings, a totally British city that I just remember, now as lost as Atlantis. And what follows is a rather moving warning to us all of how very small acts of laziness or simple negligence can do vast damage, and of how equally small acts of goodness can transform the world. Do see it.