Last weekend I saw We Live in Time, directed by John Crowley and starring Andrew Garfield as Tobias and Florence Pugh as Almut. This film, to me, is an example of an “almost great” movie. Crowley did a nice job directing the individual scenes. Garfield and Pugh had wonderful chemistry as a couple navigating their differences and her terminal illness while trying to maintain an air of normalcy for their young daughter. They also both gave stellar performances that could gain some recognition for both of them this coming awards season.
Unfortunately, Crowley couldn’t direct his way out of a couple of plot holes that took me out of the movie just enough to reduce the emotional impact it had on me at the end. I feel like this was a movie that should have had me with a ginormous lump in my throat by the end. Whether these ideas were in the original screenplay and got cut for the sake of running time, I don’t know. But I do know the film needed another couple of scenes to answer a couple of key questions.
Warning: Spoilers ahead. Come back after you see the movie.
What Crowley did do very well was always have the feeling of limited time hanging over the characters. Obviously, Almut has limited time to live as she battles stage 3 ovarian cancer. However, even the day-to-day things they deal with as they go through their lives always have time as a backdrop.
Where he missed the mark were some of the details. There were a couple of scenes in particular that were missing that I felt should have been there in order to tie things up better. Almut is a chef who is up-and-coming and encouraged by her peers to compete in a European chef contest. However, her doctors, concerned about her metastasizing cancer, want her to pull back. She tells Tobias that she won’t enter the contest, but she does anyway, and the final round is scheduled for the day they’re supposed to be married. Tobias finds all this out when Almut’s aggressive practice schedule causes her to miss picking up their daughter from school. She admits to Tobias that she’s doing this contest and that it conflicts with their wedding day. We then see Tobias tearfully throwing away the wedding invitations they had so carefully chosen together, which feels very much like a representation of the fracturing of a relationship.
Then, the next thing we see is Almut prepping for the contest, then going out to the floor where a cheering audience waits. A cheering audience that includes Tobias and their daughter enthusiastically holding up a sign and cheering Almut on. Personally, I found that very jarring, and I felt like at least two scenes needed to happen in between. Tobias needed to have some realization of why this was important to Almut. She spent the previous scene saying how much she needed this so that she could be remembered as something other than her daughter’s mother. We needed to see Tobias have that realization and come to understand that this was bigger than him. He then needed to say that to Almut, who then needed to give something to Tobias, perhaps marrying him in a local courthouse before the competition to make their union complete. It should have been important for them to be on equal terms here as they prepare to part ways.
There was one other thing that I thought could have brought a lot more drama to this screenplay. Their first big fight is a disagreement over kids. Tobias wants them, but Almut doesn’t. Then after discovering she has ovarian cancer, she has the option to have a full hysterectomy to lessen the chance of the cancer coming back. She opts not to do that, thinking that maybe she would like to have children someday, and then her cancer goes into remission. Then they have a baby, but the cancer comes back, this time in a much more serious way.
There was a great moment for Almut to blame Tobias for her cancer. Even if he didn’t pressure her into not doing the full hysterectomy, although that would also have been better, she could have had a line telling him that she wouldn’t have this cancer if he hadn’t wanted kids so bad. Something along those lines would have created a lot of conflict and tension that would have been a lot more engaging and dramatic. It would have been another challenge for them to overcome, which would have made the movie much more interesting.
Just my humble opinion.
Otherwise, I thought this was a terrific film. As love stories go, We Live in Time might be this generation’s Love Story without the iconically sappy line. However, the last scene, where they go skating and wave goodbye to each other, was a little on the nose. If you like a good love story, this is definitely a film you should check out.
You can also hear more thoughts on this on the Gen X v Z: A Movie Podcast, which is available wherever you listen to podcasts.
