We Live in Time is a romance/drama, released in the US on October 11, 2024. The initial intentions of the movie was to make the audience realize how little time they have and make them want to “Live in Time,” but the choppy timeline and mediocre ending makes the audience completely ignore the message trying to be conveyed. It was super overhyped with all of their interviews when it was basically a let down.
The movie goes back and forth between multiple different timelines, such as Almut (played by Florence Pugh) and Tobias (played by Andrew Garfield) before meeting, the start of their relationship, and after Almut’s 2nd cancer diagnosis. There is no significant sign of these time changes besides her hair changing, so unless you have been deeply following along with the plot, you wouldn’t know what timeline it is as “the chronological jumble will be a dealbreaker for some people” (rogerebert.com). The movie portrays their relationship as much more realistic than most relationships on TV: showing the battle between one wanting kids and one not, arguing over how Almut gets treatment, etc. Almut tugs at viewers heartstrings, telling Tobias how she’d rather live “six [really] amazing, fantastic, proactive months than 12 really, really [terrible] passive ones.” Anyone in the audience can see how much effort Florence and Andrew put into their characters, but no matter how hard they tried, their phenomenal acting can’t save the movie.
The film continuously builds up emotional scenes, such as Almut and Tobias telling their daughter Almut has cancer or Almut’s first chemo treatment. Right before these scenes get to their main point, the scene changes. It built up this longing for Almut to live and feel complete with her life, yet they kill her off with no emotions or a goodbye. All she got was a wave on an ice-skating rink and a time jump to one scene of Tobias and their daughter cracking eggs.
In my opinion, I would only give this movie a 6.5/10. They hyped the movie up so much with their promotions for it, but the jumbled timeline and weak emotional build up was not enough to make me ever want to see it again. We Live in Time only has 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, and only 3.7/5 on Google Reviews. It almost felt like a rushed school project, where the editors and producers thought it was just good enough to get turned in.
