An excellent romantic drama is difficult to come by, but when you have two Oscar nominees as your leads, the chemistry and romance come naturally. In one of TIFF’s buzziest films this year, John Crowley (Brooklyn) directs the hotly-anticipated We Live In Time starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, who star as a young couple whose chance encounter leads to a decades-spanning love story.
An unconventional romance—told non-linearly—We Live In Time opens with a serious health diagnosis for Almut (Pugh). Her relationship with Tobias (Garfield) is then presented in three distinct timeframes as the film carefully constructs the arc of their relationship through memory, meaning, and living one’s life to the absolute fullest (especially given the illness to come). The result is a romantic and often humorous look at life, making We Live In Time one of the fall’s must-see movies (you can read our review here).
Rachel West from That Shelf spoke with Crowley about the film following its world premiere at TIFF.
That Shelf: Congratulations on the film. I really wanted to ask you about what made both Florence and Andrew perfect for these roles.
John Crowley (JC): Well, Andrew, I had worked with before on Boy A (2007), so I knew his work. I’ve also watched his work grow in the interim. He has an emotionality to him, both as an actor, but also as as a man, that that felt to me like he would be very comfortable in playing Tobias, who is basically quite a feminine, masculine man. You know, he’s a man who’s at ease with his own emotions. But also there’s an aspect of Andrew’s work which I’ve always loved, which is, he’s very, very funny. He’s a wonderful physical comedian. And I think to be able to marry that aspect of his work with the emotionality felt like a really rich blend, and that I thought he would, he would go for it.
He also understands grief in his own life. He just does. He has that experience of it, and he’s eloquent about it. And it indeed was one of the things that he responded to in the script that he wanted to get right in the performance.
Florence, I had never met. I had been a huge admirer of hers from her performances, and was very struck by the degree of strength in her performances and and thought that if she could marry that strength with the vulnerability that’s needed when when Almut finally has to confront her fear of what it feels like to her after she’s no longer around, that could be really magical. So, yeah, you know, she responded to it equally immediately, and then you just hope that they get on. They’re both very creatively ambitious for their own work. They want to do good work, and you hope, then that that they would work very hard to kind of create the space which they would meet imaginatively and be able to to to fly with it.
That Shelf: How was the structure of the film decided?
JC: It was part of [Nick Payne’s] script from the first draft that I read. The first draft that he sent me did have the three times frames. There was an awful lot more stuff in it, so the work that we did over the next sort of nine months was about distilling it down. There were several endings; there were several beginnings. It was sort of it was about distilling it to its essence and trying to get close to the heart of what the film was about [while] holding on to that time structure, because that’s what made it for me, cinematic. I was reminded of some of the films Nicholas Roeg, for instance, like Don’t Look Now, or Bad Timing, which have an essential cinematic quality between the intercutting between them, the structure of the film.
When we shot it and put it together, it didn’t play in the way that it read. We had to break the whole thing apart into 1000 pieces on the floor and put it all back together for the same sort of overall purpose of trying to express various facets of this relationship and what it means to try and make a life together as a couple in the face of mortality.
That Shelf: What was the conversation like with your actors on set? There are a lot of big emotions here.
JC: It’s fair to say that that it was intense. Very early on in rehearsals, it became apparent that they liked each other, and they made each other laugh a lot and and that was sincere. And furthermore, as we worked together and rehearsed, it became clear that they trusted each other creatively. It was very touching to watch in rehearsals.
There was an organic, natural chemistry that was beginning to bubble with them and my job was to create the space every morning, so they could walk in and just find each other in the scene, and that extended to their physical ease with each other.
That Shelf: Was it difficult to find that balance between humour and drama?
JC: I think the two go hand in hand for me tonally. I’m very comfortable with scenes that do both of them and I think it’s also what made me really feel that we needed two great actors to be able to play those two, and once they spotted that, that’s the that’s the sort of game that we’re playing. The aim of it. They attacked that side of the story with great relish.
It’s much closer to what life, I think, is like if you’re on the inside of a relationship that can be dealing with some very dark stuff, but is still playful. I mean, in the birth scene, the stakes are really high, and yet they never lose their sense of humour in it and it doesn’t ever just become a funny scene. You worry for them that in that scene, and yet you can be laughing at the absurdity of it at the same time. That’s the mix, that that is where I wanted to make the film, that that’s what felt truthful to me in it.
That Shelf: I really liked the discussion about, “do you want to waste time or enjoy time?” Is that something that has stuck with you after making this film, something that you really think about?
JC: I think it’s part of a lot of choices in life. And, yeah, very, very much. So I think I was aware of that, even when I was quite young, which is, what do you do to maximize your life? And you know, when I was a bit younger, the answer would have been, well, work is the exciting thing. Work is everything.
I guess since I became a parent, there’s a very different pull, which is, work is every bit as important as it ever was to me, just like it is to Almut. My emotional life is every bit as important as it has been since I was lucky enough to find it and I’ve given up trying to reconcile those two things. They are irreconcilable because the two aspects of myself and you just get used to trying to make what is the right choice within any given situation, but I don’t think it’s it’s something you come down on one side or another without costing you a lot.
That Shelf: What would you hope audiences take away from We Live In Time?
JC: I think I would like them to take away an experience from the film, which is that it feels like life. I would like people to see this sort of the sadness in the story as part and that the two are very closely linked together. And you know that life isn’t that isn’t, isn’t either or it’s, it’s a rich combination of the two. I think the great thing about making a story about somebody that dies is that in a film. Death isn’t the end, you know, it’s not irredeemable in life, death is a tragedy. But in a story, of course, you get the feeling at the end that that she’s there in the room with them when they’re cracking the eggs, you know. And I would hope that small details like that would strike a viewer as being true to their own lives.
We Live In Time opens in theatres on October 18.
