FILM REVIEW
WE LIVE IN TIME
Rated R
107 Minutes
Released October 18th
We Live in Time is a universal story of love, bonding, friendship, time, and grief. In this film, little incidents that aren’t usually included in storytelling make it more human. The movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2023. It stars Andrew Garfield as “Tobias” and Florence Pugh as “Almut,” who seem so natural together, it’s easy to think they have been together for years and have lived through this story of their relationship and friendship.
Garfield creates a fully fleshed-out character who is funny, quirky, and human. This film is very personal to Garfield. He was born in Los Angeles to a British Mom and an American Dad, but when he was 3 the family moved to Surrey, and he grew up there, where most of this film was shot. His Mom could sense that he was artistic and encouraged him in his career. He says that although he left and came to the US to pursue his career as soon as he was old enough, “going back there (to Surrey) I was like ‘Damn, I have to admit to my father that actually it’s alright down here. It’s beautiful.’”
Garfield won a Tony for Best Actor in 2018 for his stage performance in Angels in America and he has become one of the most sought-after actors in the world of cinema. His Mom died from pancreatic cancer in 2019, so the experience of making this film about grief follows his real-life story. He related his sadness about her death on the Stephen Colbert show in 2021, and the interview has since gone viral. Garfield feels that his love for her stays with him and that feeling his grief is “the only way I can feel close to her again.”
Pugh, a British actress born in Oxford, and known for her roles in Midsommar (2019), Little Women (2019), and Oppenheimer (2023), is amazing and fully believable in this movie as well. She truly captures her character’s desperate need for making her mark on the world and on other people. Her character has the courage to choose not to make the fear of death color her life. All the characters in the movie are memorable and real. As Almut’s chef assistant, Lee Braithwaite is fantastic, as is Grace Delaney as daughter “Eila.”
I believe We Live in Time would have been more emotionally impactful if the story had been told chronologically. The tale is recounted in mini vignettes which occur randomly, the way we remember life rather than the way life unfolds in reality. I understand what writer Nick Payne and director John Crowley meant to do. However, in life’s timeline, our emotions are formed and built from minute to minute, and unless you have already lived these “slices of life” in time order, you lose the impact of this emotion-building when you scramble the timeline. These are characters we don’t know yet as an audience, and we need to develop our memories of them as they play out. According to science, once we have lived our experiences, and only then, do we become the director of our own memories. We have great control over the memory of moments we have lived, but not until we have lived them.
The name of the film sets the theme – that you have the power to form memories with your life, and each slice of time lived takes on a life of its own in your recollection and in the memories of others. It would be wise to take into this movie with you some insightful thoughts from Garfield: “I love that this is not a tourist’s Britain that you’re seeing in this film. It’s an unglamorous Britain, where two people, a couple you might pass on the street without any thought, are having this extraordinary thing happen in their lives.” He also said of his experience making the film while still grieving for his mother, “Every single moment feels sacred…it’s like a meditation on the shortness and sacredness of life…I can feel a far deeper well of hope.”
Kathryn Whitney Boole has spent most of her life in the entertainment industry, which has been the backdrop for remarkable adventures with extraordinary people. She is a Talent Manager with Studio Talent Group in Santa Monica. kboole@gmail.com
