We Live in Time (2024)

We-Live-in-Time-(2024)
We Live in Time (2024)

The grief-stricken love story owes its popularity to ‘The Notebook’, but it began to ‘die’ with the wide variety of adaptations of Nicholas Sparks’ books by his copycats. While viewing John Crowley’s skillfully made “We Will In Time”, which was screened during the Toronto International Film Festival, I was touched by how it draws a lot from the doomed love genre-spanning several decades but I was surprised to learn that it was not something we have fully witnessed in the post-Covid area at least not with such gifted actors. In an era where filmmaking is very cynical, the two movies that had their premiere today in Toronto aroused some emotions. They were not just deeply earnest to the people and audience where they were not expecting to be manipulated, being emotionally stirred was enough. (The former Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck” will also be discussed in due course. Spoiler: It’s fantastic.) “We Live In Time” is a movie that pulls on your heartstrings. The filmmakers are looking directly at the audience’s eyes expecting the audience to be delighted and wishing for more. This is the kind of movie that would completely disintegrate in the absence of exceptional actors. For this, we are thankful that Andrew and Florence are part of the cast.

The movie has a visually scattered script that ties into the plot. The movie starts off with Pugh’s Almut suffering from cancer, and while talking to her partner Tobias (Garfield), she is faced with an unfathomable dilemma of six months in bliss versus a year of chemotherapy that may do more harm than good. After this, Nick Payne’s screenplay shifts to the partnership of Tobias and Almut where it basically covers four different timelines. We skip to several sources where Almut, a professional chef whose cancer returned, repeatedly opts to conceal her hypocrisy addendum decision from Tobias who is already burdened with restraining her mental and physical exhaustion and decides to stealthily participate in a culinary contest.

“We Live in Time” revisits the early days of the courtship of Tobias & Almut. Particularly, how woods met was particularly interesting. ‘I literally hit him with my car’ is what she said. This one kind of blurs with a few scenes in which Almut had once battled with cancer and forced the quite young Almut and Tobias to come to terms with never having children. Although, we do presume they did. One of the reasons in other scenes there is a very big belly Almut. And in the end, there was maybe one of the most impressive birth scenes in major movies in a long time.

Film Editing: This aspect is incredibly important and it tackles paralysis as an ethical problem too. The unclear linear order will make life harder for some who appreciate their dryers as easy to follow. Crowley and his editor Justine Wright have opted not to include title cards or other markers besides Almut’s physical state which overlooks a pregnant belly and bald head owing to cancer treatment. Sometimes the jumps feel random, but upon raising the emotional logic reveals itself. One tends to remember crucial events in their life when coming to an end out of order. The way the script is set it must have one or two jumps too many, coupled with the fact at times I longed to spend time in one single chapter of this couple for a longer period than the film allows. This jumping is however a primary source of the challenges for the Oscar-nominated works and it is what usually paints the prospect’s control issue. The question is then how does one approach day 10 from day 100 or even day 1000 of the relationship?

This makes for a truly rewarding acting exercise for followers of Garfield and Pugh. The “Little Women” star has more heavy lifting in terms of narrative, but it’s Garfield who stands out in my humble opinion. There is so much concern, anger, and deep sadness manifested through that incredibly folkloric expressive face of his.

They’re both brilliant actors. They not only managed to piece together a character with perfect flaws but somehow worked well with the subpar script as well. It does not hurt at all that they have genuine chemistry while Crowley models their relationship like it is between two grown people. The new stain of “No Sex in Movies” on social media will certainly have a new target.

Sometimes one can almost see the buttons pressed in, for example, We Live in Time. It isn’t often that films successfully incorporate two different cancer diagnoses, a birth, a falling in love, and even the death of a character without coming off as overly sentimental. But I think it will not matter much for the intended audience of this film. There’s a reason we keep trying to watch these films; we are crossing our fingers and optimistic that we have found the love of our dreams, or we are just waiting to have a quirky meet-cute like Almut and Tobias. But hopefully, without the car crash.

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