Cinema for the Infirm: We Live in Time
An appealing cast almost makes up for a multitude of sins. Almost.
(Cinema for the Infirm is a feature in which I, a person with a potentially life-threatening illness, discuss films that feature a seriously ill character, for better or worse [mostly worse]. Spoilers should be expected.)
What are we so afraid of when it comes to the reality of illness and dying? Given the popularity of the Terrifier movies, we can handle a killer clown ripping people’s faces off, bisecting them with chainsaws, and force-feeding them live rats. But showing any side effects of chemotherapy beyond losing one’s hair? Forget it, that’s too much, let alone depicting death as anything other than quietly disappearing off-screen.
Obviously, the fear comes from the fact that we’re far more likely to die (or lose someone we love) of a terminal illness than we are to encounter a murder clown. Cancer is a little too real. But at the same time, it begs another question: why do we keep making movies about a subject that we’re so collectively uneasy about honestly portraying? With a non-linear storyline, 2024’s We Live in Time attempts to take a new approach to the classic “dying young” romantic tearjerker, but has not one single original thing to say about it.
Given it stars Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, who are among the most interesting and likable young actors working today, I had high hopes going into it. Those hopes quickly diminished when within the first five minutes Pugh’s character, Almut1, literally stops and smells the flowers on her morning jog. It doesn’t get any better from there.
When the film opens, Almut and her longtime boyfriend, Tobias (Garfield), receive the sobering news that Almut’s cancer, thought to be in remission, has returned with a vengeance. Facing multiple rounds of chemotherapy and surgery, she considers whether she really wants to put herself through such a grueling treatment when the outcome is uncertain at best. Lifting from Julia Roberts’ “I’d rather have 30 minutes of wonderful, etc.” speech in Steel Magnolias, Almut explains that she’d rather have “six fucking amazing, fantastic, proactive months than twelve really, really shitty passive ones.”
Then the timeline jumps back several years to when Almut, a gourmet chef who’s just opened her own restaurant, and Tobias, a sales representative for Weetabix cereal (you gotta love movie jobs) first meet. It’s the mother of all meet cutes, when Tobias, clad only in a bathrobe, inexplicably wanders onto a highway and Almut hits him with her car. She hits him hard enough that it’s a bit puzzling that he’s not hobbling around in chronic pain for the remainder of the film, let alone that this leads to them going out on a date and almost immediately falling in love.
After that, their relationship is smooth sailing, except that Tobias wants to have children and Almut does not. This might have some dramatic heft, except for the fact that, because of the nonlinear timeline, we already know she changed her mind at some point, because they have a small child when Almut goes through her second bout with cancer. That timeline is the only unique thing about We Live in Time, which covers the beginning of Almut and Tobias’s relationship, her first battle with cancer, and then the end of her life just a few years later, but mostly depicted out of sequence.
Presumably this is to both evoke the jumbled, non-linear way we look back on our lives, particularly with the people we love, and to stick the emotional knife in and break it off. This is especially obvious in such scenes as Tobias and Almut celebrating her first bout with cancer being in remission by going to a carnival, blissfully unaware of what the audience already knows: that she’s doomed, they’re doomed, it’s all doomed. But it also allows screenwriter Nick Payne to neatly resolve most of the film’s conflicts off-screen, much as his heroine’s death will be at the end.
The most glaring example of this is Tobias and Almut’s decision to have children. Initially Almut is adamant that she doesn’t want children, and offended that Tobias would even bring it up in the first place. Yet, when she learns that she has ovarian cancer, her primary concern is saving one of her ovaries so that she can try to get pregnant later, even though a full hysterectomy would result in a far better long-term outcome. We get no sense of what caused her to reconsider, other than Tobias is just that great of a guy. Tobias, you’ll note, does not suggest that he’d rather have her than a hypothetical child that doesn’t exist yet, so it’s questionable how great a guy he really is. The word “adoption” is never mentioned. The audience is meant to find this all very moving.
Similarly, after Almut declines another round of treatment and her cancer is considered terminal, she devotes her remaining time to practicing for and participating in a prestigious international cooking competition, because that’s definitely something someone dying of cancer would have the energy for. Tobias is heartbroken and angry to discover that the finals take place the very same weekend as their wedding, which could have been avoided if Almut had simply told him about the competition in the first place, but for whatever reason (the script declared it) she doesn’t. Regardless, they resolve that conflict off-screen as well, and both Tobias and their cute little daughter are there to cheer Almut along. If you guessed that she only starts showing weakness at the very end of the competition, still manages to win it anyway, and then quietly slinks off somewhere to die away from where the audience can see, congratulations, you’ve written We Live in Time.
Released in the fall of 2024, We Live in Time was a modest box office success, and I can only assume this was due to the star power of Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. Indeed, the only thing that makes this remotely watchable is that they’re an appealing, believable couple. A lot of men would let Florence Pugh hit them with her car, and Andrew Garfield lets his big sad eyes do much of the talking, to good effect. They put a lot of energy into playing thinly drawn characters about which we know exactly three things: Almut (a) is a professional chef, (b) used to be a champion figure skater, and (c) grew up in a big family, while Tobias (a) sells cereal for a living, (b) is divorced, and (c) grew up in a small family.
Oh, and Almut cracks eggs in an unnecessarily complicated way involving three bowls. Other than that, they’re attractive blanks, paper dolls to represent how both beautiful and cruel life can be.
The script is made from even thinner broth. If you step away for a moment and miss the brief scene where Almut’s doctor tells them that her cancer is not responding to treatment, you might not be aware of how dire her situation has gotten. Even the buzzcut Almut gets in anticipation of her hair falling out just looks more chic than anything else. She goes jogging, she continues to work full-time (as a chef!) and tend to her daughter, and, of course, she has the boundless energy required to compete in a cooking contest.
As Roger Ebert pointed out in his review of 2008’s The Bucket List, just having cancer, even without chemo, is exhausting, noting “Your list is more likely to be topped by keeping down a full meal, having a triumphant bowel movement, keeping your energy up in the afternoon, letting your loved ones know you love them, and convincing the doc your reports of pain are real and not merely disguising your desire to become a drug addict.” Most of us know this to be true (even if you’ve never had cancer you’ve almost certainly known someone who has), so it makes one wonder why we still eat up these sanitized depictions of illness and death, where the dying heroine isn’t even given dark circles under her eyes.
The plot is further reductive by making Almut’s stubborn insistence in participating in the cooking contest (and possibly hastening her death) based in a noble desire to be remembered by her daughter as having accomplished something. “I don’t want to just be somebody’s dead fucking mom!” she cries to Tobias, which is fair, and yet it’s unclear if this is supposed to say something about Almut as a character (she’s so hardheaded she’s willing to die sooner to make a point), or if screenwriter Nick Payne genuinely believes that when a parent (particularly a mother) is facing death their primary obligation is to leave a legacy their children can be proud of.
If so, what does that say about dead fucking moms who didn’t accomplish much in their lives? Are they not worth remembering? Did they let their kids down? Would Almut’s death be less sad if she had just worked at a post office, and her biggest accomplishment was winning a waffle iron at a church raffle? Is your life worth less if your obituary is one paragraph shorter than someone else’s?
And this, of course, loops back into the primary issue of movies about serious illness and death: the pervasive message that these things are only tragic (and worth talking about) when they involve young, attractive, middle-class white people2. Most deaths that don’t involve someone dying peacefully in their sleep at the age of 100 are tragic, but it’s both baffling and disheartening that culture has dictated that, like Animal Farm, some deaths are more tragic than others, and that designation often comes down to race, money, and how nice you were to look at.
It goes without saying that at no point in We Live in Time does anyone bring up the subject of money, even though it’s sadly common for cancer patients to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt just to stay alive. Given that they live in a picturesque country cottage outside of London it’s safe to say Tobias and Almut are doing just fine in that area, just like every other fictitious person dealing with a serious (if not terminal illness) who can still manage to check off extravagant bucket lists, and make sure they’re worth remembering when they’re gone. In reality, most of them are just trying to do the best they can living in their own time.
It’s German, apparently.
See also: mental illness, true crime, etc.