Warning: This story contains spoilers aboutWe Live in Time.
We Live in Timeis a film about mortality, but it’s not a film about death.
“This is a film which deals with cancer,” says Crowley.
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in ‘We Live in Time’.A24
“It’s not a film which is about physical decline.
There was never a scene where you saw her expire as it were.”
“There was never a bedside death scene,” he notes.
Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh in ‘We Live in Time’.Peter Mountain/A24
“That was never in the script.
Every scene of their relationship is a goodbye scene in a way.
From the beginning, there’s this weird awareness of the urgency of their lives together.
Grace Delaney, Andrew Garfield, and Florence Pugh in ‘We Live in Time’.Peter Mountain/StudioCanal
“That’s not how the film ends in script form,” reveals Garfield.
“The old structure was her walking into the doorway going, ‘I’m in remission.’
I felt very good about it when we shot it.
“In life, death is irredeemable, right?”
“Somebody dies, they die.
And in storytelling, it’s not.
But it felt almost literal; it was confusing.”
She’s not gone, right?'
That’s what death is the hope that she’s going to walk through that door any second.”
“When we were doing the location hunting, we kept searching for liminal spaces,” he explains.
“There are a lot of spaces where people pass through to go to other places.
That’s how they meet, on a road.
There’s corridors in hospitals, there’s anonymous hotels, and then, the ice skating.
Then, in contrast to that, you have their domestic setup.
It’s very naturalistic because they’re literally building their nest in contrast to these places.”
“The ice skating does feel like it’s liminal between this and another world,” he notes.
We tried to keep it just as a day out and a bit of fun.
“It’s just the everyday playful reality of a child waving to her mom,” he concludes.
“And you feel the wave of something more significant underneath it than that.
I was aware of its symbolic value, and I was also a bit wary of it.”
Peter Mountain/StudioCanal
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Tobias, as dad, was creating a ritual for himself and for her.”
A ritual that, like the film, transcends the limits of space and time.
