“Marriage is a strange combination of dream and reality, and we spend our lives as couples trying to negotiate that divide.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
Sometimes I can be a bit annoying when asked questions about movies. I love cinema so I often have a lot to say when asked something on the subject. When someone asks if I like romantic comedies or romantic in general I say yes but usually feel the need to clarify. If it’s a paint-by-numbers rom-com like any Jennifer Lopez dreck or Sweet Home Alabama I can’t stand it.
The premise usually goes something like two polar opposites have a meet-cute, play coy, give in and start dating. Then one of them does something bad and they break up and then the person does everything to get that person back because they are in love. It usually ends after some over-the-top act of insanity because “love makes you crazy” and then it’s a fairytale ending. Boring! It’s predictable and done to absolute death. It’s easy to swallow, unchallenging, microwaved tv dinner because trying tonight after working all day just sounds exhausting.
One of my favorite movies is called About Time. Directed by Richard Curtis of Love Actually fame, starring Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams. Romance is a major aspect of this story but I would argue at the heart of it is a story of family, from finding true love to saying our final goodbyes to the people that raised us. It is a full circle kind of story and it’s beautifully told.
La La Land is a romance musical where in the end, as far as the romance is concerned, it doesn’t last. The moral here being that just because it didn’t stand the test of time doesn’t mean it was time wasted. It was a time in the main characters’ lives that shaped so much about who they are and would become over the next several chapters of their lives. They can cherish what they had while being mature enough to acknowledge that sometimes things simply run their course. They still lived happily ever after, just not in the way most of us wanted. Dreams were still realized and how beautiful is that?
Another favorite of mine is from director John Crowley called Brooklyn. It stars the incredible Saoirse Ronan who must first fall in love with her new home, thousands of miles away from Ireland, her homeland, and if she can find the strength to do that, she can establish her life in a new homeland, Brooklyn, NY. There she meets Tony. Tony, young but determined, knows a good thing when he sees it, and her name is Eilis. Together they begin a blossoming, gorgeous love story with all the promise in the world ahead of them. At the same time she is finding herself in America, Ireland is calling her back for countless reasons by people intending to keep her there for good. Eilis must decide where her heart truly belongs.
Director John Crowley’s latest effort? We Live in Time.
Starring the indelible Andrew Garfield and the endlessly talented Florence Pugh, We Live in Time, is simple in story, but complicated, intricate and brimming with nuance. The story is predictable. In fact it basically tells you from the beginning how this whole thing is going to conclude. What it establishes throughout the film is for this particular love story, it’s about the journey, not the destination. Its focus is on a couple facing great tragedy in the early years of their marriage. The point of the story is for the characters to look back on their lives and realize that despite the undesirable, inescapable ending, the journey was worth their pain. In the short time they have together, they experience love, pure, unfiltered joy, betrayal and forgiveness. They experience the beauty of life even in the darkest of moments. If not for rainy days, one could never appreciate the colors of a rainbow.
The structure of the story is told in back and forth sequences through time. It first shows them getting horrific news and quickly cuts to them meeting for the first time, a unique meet-cute to say the least. The entire story is told like this. It showcases the growing pains a person endures throughout their life and how they arrived in these places. The person I was when I was twenty-one is not who I am now. Pugh’s character tells Garfield early on she has no desire to have children. It almost ruins them before they’ve really even begun. Cut to some time further into their relationship and they’re hugging excitedly on the toilet because her pregnancy test is positive. She’s elated. And so is he. Change is the only constant. I think that’s the life lesson here. Their relationship, their marriage, her being a mother and him being a husband, are all finite. It’s about the time we have and the acceptance that things will never and can never stay as we want them to. (I remember coming home from Disneyland in early 2007 with a Minnie doll for my newborn niece, Makenzie. She graduates high school next year. Her younger brother is less than five years from doing the same. I’m not sure I’m ready for it.)
We Live in Time is a celebration of life, in all its missteps, triumphs, rashes, bruises and boogers. It’s an acknowledgement that the mistakes and flaws are the very things that make life so significant and perfectly imperfect. The chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is a marvel unto itself. They are so wonderfully symbiotic and bursting with talent and put forth genuine love and heart into every moment they have together on screen. It is a doomed relationship that only holds beauty and countless memories for the rest of their lives, however long that may be. Everything about this on-screen couple feels real as if we’ve been granted permission to follow a couple in the everyday moments of their newly forming life as two people in love. For all the pain and anguish that life throws at us, We Live in Time proves that within the darkest of times love is still there, just waiting.
Rated R For: language, sexuality and nudity
Runtime: 107 minutes
After Credits Scene: No
Genre: Romance, Drama
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, Lee Braithwaite, Grace Delaney
Directed By: John Crowley
Out of 10
Story: 9/ Acting: 9/ Directing: 9/ Visuals: 8
OVERALL: 9/10
Buy to Own: Yes.
Check out the trailer below:
Comments