We Live In Time (2024)
Directed by John Crowley
My life was a bit of a mess there, wunnit? Not that life’s daily battles ever end, but in the past year and a half, things have felt more stable. I attribute this to making a commitment to good choices, particularly in my relationships. But when I observed Tobias (Andrew Garfield) attempt to keep himself together in the midst of going through a divorce, only for life’s affronts to assemble themselves into a kind of flanking army, I couldn’t help but be reminded of those unfortunate nights where crushing loneliness left me to wander, desperate for connection anywhere I could find it.
John Crowley’s We Live In Time observes Tobias and Almut (Florence Pugh) through their meet-cute, through life’s disagreements, and through their cataclysmic travails. Much like Crowley’s early film, 2015’s Brooklyn, he’s very keen about imbuing a nostalgic, auburn glow to those earlier sequences, only to upend your expectations. With Nick Payne’s screenplay, Crowley and editor Justine Wright fragment the narrative so that the key dramatic elements are not so much revealed but rather plainly stated: a matter of fact. Almut, a renowned chef, is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This is her second bout with cancer, and unlike the preceding one, she refuses to allow the disease to define who she is, both to Tobias and their daughter.
But the story starts with Tobias, living with his father, working as a kind of traveling salesman for an English snack company. He gets his divorce papers delivered while he’s on the road, where he stays at a nondescript hotel. His pen doesn’t work. The lead in his pencil cracks the moment he presses it against the signature line. So, donning nothing but his hotel bathrobe, he saunters about to a local convenience market where he buys pens and snacks. The cashier looks at him as if he’s crazed. “Divorced,” he remarks, as he tightens his cotton belt. He still wears his wedding ring as he returns back, dropping one of his newly purchased pens onto the road, where he promptly gets run over by a mini cooper. Mercifully, the car was silver, not red.
Tired of being a shadow in a setting sun, I would choose night, where after my break-up of 2018, I’d spend every night out. I’d throw myself into one relationship after another, often in overlapping fashion, capturing some version of the car-crash meet-cute of Tobias and Almut. You see those moments of hushed excitement, where the two seemingly want to memorize every glance, kiss, touch, laugh, wit, and moment. I grew addicted to these highs, and as expeditiously as I entered these moments, I would just as quickly bolt out at the first signs of trouble; where I’d take what I’d think were perfectly normal women and turn them into demons. And you see that here too, where Tobias and Almut argue about the prospect of children, only for the two to briefly separate. The argument is a recognizable one; I’ve been on both sides of it, as an antagonist and pacifist. My eyes were nevertheless on the exit and I’d move on to the next relationship, rinse and repeat.
Maybe I was avoiding the magnitude of a real relationship, of something that requires actual building and tending. Still haven’t quite unpacked that one yet. As Crowley’s film progresses, the past funnels into the present, where Almut, knowing that her treatment options are limited, opts to participate in a global culinary competition. Here’s where the film loses me considerably, in part that these sequences are all so woefully generic. The last few years of exceptional media devoted to the act of cooking - whether it be The Bear, Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things, or even Frederick Wiseman’s documentary Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros - have demonstrated a level of intimacy to the act that Crowley’s film is desperately missing. Yet despite these misgivings, I admit to being won over by both Garfield and Pugh. Their chemistry compounded with the familiar terrain this film charts, and how it mirrored many (many) of my experiences, provided me with an adequate nostalgia rush that’s nice to come by, from time to time. And if there’s any solace I can take from the film observing some of life’s present day anxieties - the stress of planning a wedding, the anticipation of fatherhood - it’s quite lovely seeing a character navigate through these stresses, inelegantly. Life’s messy, and we should all stop pretending that it’s not.