Film Review - We Live in Time (2024)

A hopeful spin on the ‘terminal illness’ trope that will have you laughing and crying in equal measure.

Breathing life into a subgenre that some could accuse of being done to death – for lack of a better phrase – We Live in Time is about love, life, and how a terminal illness can screw everything up.

I’m always sceptical when sitting down to a film that I suspect has a predictable storyline and ending: as soon as I saw the trailer, I got the gist. Though while you can probably tell early on where things are headed for the star-crossed lovers Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh), the journey is still a ride well worth taking.

This film is all about moments: ones that change the course of your life, ones that seem insignificant at the time but in hindsight were among the most special, and ones that end up defining you even after you’re gone. The structure of the film seamlessly weaves together snapshots from the past, present and future. The multiple timelines play with the audiences’ emotions, throwing us from a near-fatal-yet-adorable meet-cute straight into an unpromising cancer diagnosis for Almut at the doctor’s office. Despite the severity of the time travelling scene changes, it’s still done in a very natural way where you don’t feel like you’re being manipulated by shock-factor editing. In fact, the beauty of this film lies in its naturalism; everything feels authentic, and this is emphasised by the raw, earnest performances from the two leads.

The story takes on a dark subject matter from a fresh and lighthearted perspective, resulting in more funny and joyous instances than hopeless and despairing ones. This falls in line with director John Crowley’s aim to strike a delicate balance between the themes of humour and grief. Nick Payne has meticulously crafted an immaculate script, where every scene has enough depth and fluidity to be its own short film with a beginning, middle and end. Pugh and Garfield have a knack for making each conversation feel true to life, effortlessly portraying actions and reactions in a way that I’m sure most viewers could imagine themselves behaving under the same circumstances. The whole thing is gritty, unfiltered, and showcases this trope – a couple navigating the hardships of life – in its purest form.

The realism also comes through in the script’s lack of declarations; we don’t see any over-the-top expressions of affection, or even hear the couple plainly say that they love each other. But you can feel it – in the emotive performances and light-dialogue scenes that play with the art of the unspoken.

There’s a heartbreaking scene near the end of the film where Almut admits she’s terrified of ‘being forgotten’, and how she’s determined to avoid this fate. To some, the solution to that sentiment involves leaving some sort of mark on the world – which to Almut means winning a world chef championship. But in the last few minutes of the film she comes to the poignant realisation that surviving in the memories of your loved ones, instead of making history, is all that matters – and that’s what really fired up the waterworks for me. This realisation is the catalyst for a powerful final scene that encapsulates Almut’s pride in the life she led and what she’s leaving behind, showing us that a life cut short doesn’t have to be such a tragedy.