We Live in Time: A race against the clock

We Live in Time is the tearjerker we’ve all been waiting for. Produced by A24 and supported by two of the most sought-after actors, Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, this film reminds us never to waste a second of our time.

Two passionate Londoners, Almut, a young chef, and Tobias, a Weetabix representative, fall in love, have sex, fight, have a child – and then cancer barges in to ruin everything. Director John Crowley presents their love story in fragments of time in a non-chronological way. Some might find it messy, but isn’t that the essence of life? Thanks to these back-and-forth sequences, we follow the couple through the most essential and intimate moments of their lives, and when it comes to intimacy, Garfield and Pugh are masters. Intimacy is hard to fake; sure, numerous movies have fantastic and poetic sex scenes, but how many of them can make you want to cook an egg with someone? Intimacy is holding each other, supporting each other, and caring for each other. If Pugh is the beating heart of this story, Garfield is the steady shoulder.

Eight billion people are alive right now, and 20 million of them have cancer—those two facts coexist. This movie is not about pain, chemotherapy, or death but about love and life. It reminds us that this disease doesn’t define people; the lives they are living and the people they are loving are unkillable. It’s something cancer can never take away. In one scene, Pugh’s character declares that she doesn’t want her child to remember her only as the mom who had cancer. For everyone who has lost someone or is watching someone suffer from this disease, it’s crucial to remember them as human beings, as loved ones. Cancer will never define their lives, and it should never be your last memory of them. This movie is an ode to resilience, dreams, and life.

While We Live in Time is clearly not a romantic comedy, it’s not entirely a tragic love story either. Nick Payne, the screenwriter, doesn’t shy away from silly situations and surprises. Some of the tropes may be familiar, but as the French saying goes, the best broths are cooked in the oldest pots. There are hard and heartbreaking moments, but even in those, some light shines through, whether in a comment or a grimace from Garfield. Cancer takes a lot out of life, but it can’t kill laughter or joy (Garfield, having lost his mother to the disease five years ago, has said this role helped him process that loss).

This is the story of a life shared by a loving couple and everything in between: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s the most respectful and intimate portrayal of one of the biggest killers of our time. After all, what is time? Albert Einstein said that we invented it; if we follow that thinking, maybe we don’t live in time. Like this movie, we might just be timeless.