Bill
Nighy always gives a good performance and sometimes an exceptional one and this 2022 film directed by Oliver Hermanus is one of those occasions. He plays Mr Williams, a senior official
at the Public Works department at London County Council in 1953. Long widowed
with an adult son, he is deeply embedded in his job yet it is one he undertakes
without passion. Indeed, the entire department seems hidebound by procedure
shown in the example of a group of women trying to get permission and funding
for a children’s playground. In a sequence early on we see their application
being passed from Mr Williams’s department through several others before ending
back on his desk to be “kept here.” In other words, nothing will come of it.
The women are persistent enough to keep returning but is seems to make little
difference. I think we can all empathise with that sort of bureaucracy even
today!
