Overview
Early in We Live in Time — early in the film's running time for watching audiences, but not early in its central romance thanks to the movie's non-linear storytelling — Florence Pugh's Almut reacts to significant news about her health by delivering her own to Andrew Garfield's Tobias. Years after a meet-cute involving a hospital (and also a car accident, with her behind the wheel and him lightly struck by the car), they're again at one. Their relationship has never been much of a stranger to them, in fact. This time, however, as the chef and the Weetbix employee stand in the carpark after an appointment, they ponder a question that lingers over everyone but never as much as those forced to reckon with the knowledge that their future might not be guaranteed: is life best lived for quantity or quality?
Charting a decade in its characters' existence, from a surprise encounter to falling in love, weathering heartbreak, starting a family, pursuing professional dreams, navigating challenges and facing mortality, We Live in Time isn't a strict two-hander in terms of casting. Still, it's so intimately a double act between Pugh (Dune: Part Two) and Garfield (Under the Banner of Heaven) that it feels like one. See: this crucial moment, which conveys everything about Almut and Tobias' dynamic. She speaks carefully but passionately. He listens devotedly. Nothing else could be more important to either of them. Pugh's performance simmers with raw emotion. This interaction isn't about him, but Garfield turns in some of cinema's most-moving reaction work as Tobias takes in what he's being told.
Asked how important that scene is for him, Garfield is quick and decisive: "very pivotal," he tells Concrete Playground. It also cuts to the core of exactly what helps make We Live in Time so affecting. This is a heartfelt romance dealing with the fleeting nature of life — and in other hands than Garfield and Pugh's, and director John Crowley (Brooklyn) and screenwriter Nick Payne's (The Last Letter From Your Lover), it'd risk being dismissed as a weepie — but it's always about who Almut is regardless of anything that she can't control. It's about how people endure, create a life together and cherish their time together, while the hourglass empties, too. The impact that a person has beyond just being someone's parent, someone's partner or someone's child also sits at the centre of the film as much as Almut and Tobias' relationship.
And, as it delves into weighty topics for its genre while stepping through Almut and Tobias' tale, We Live in Time firmly never falls into the common trap of heroing what Tobias is going through over Almut's experience — as a person, not just as someone with an unwanted diagnosis. It doesn't dream of defining her or them through the worst thing that they'll ever confront, either. In some features, letting time jump around can be a gimmick, but here it is done with touching purpose. As the movie flits between the duo's first weeks and months together, one specific day spent in the bathroom of a service station and also their well-established romance, the non-linear structure ensures that the full wave of life and love — not specific pieces of news, or coping with their aftermath — are always pushed to the fore in an immensely well-rounded narrative.
For Garfield, Tobias is the role that brings him back to the screen. 2025 marks 18 years since his film debut in Boy A, another empathetic and sensitive film directed by Crowley — as well as a feature that earned its star a BAFTA TV award — and he's rarely been far away the viewers' gaze since, until 2022. Before half a decade had passed from his first movie, he'd made an imprint in three-time Oscar-winner The Social Network opposite Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain) and slung webs in a comic-book blockbuster in The Amazing Spider-Man. Another five years later, he had his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for Hacksaw Ridge.
Before, in-between and afterwards, Garfield kept adding interesting projects to his resume, the page-to-screen Red Riding crime saga, dystopian romance Never Let Me Go, housing-crisis drama 99 Homes, the Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)-helmed Silence, LA-set neo-noir Under the Silver Lake and Lin-Manuel Miranda's (Hamilton) Jonathan Larson biographical musical Tick, Tick... Boom! — the source of his second round of Best Actor love from the Academy Awards — among them. Two more stints as Peter Parker also eventuated, including in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Then, after television's Under the Banner of Heaven, he took some time off. One of the things that made We Live in Time a must-star for him: a memorable birth scene that Garfield likens to an action sequence.
What did it mean to join forces with Crowley again after the filmmaker gave him his initial movie role? And to dive into the meaning of life and what truly matters in We Live in Time — and to create such a deep sense of intimacy with Pugh, too? Over a cup of tea, we chatted with Garfield about all of the above, the film's efforts to avoid the tearjerker label and two key instances, one off- and the other on-screen: the "this is it!" moment that made him know he wanted to make this movie, and that carpark scene.
On Reteaming with John Crowley on We Live in Time After Boy A — and Collaborating with the Director on Empathetic and Sensitive Films
"It's quite natural because John is naturally that, and I think I'm quite naturally that, and I think it just works. There's nothing better than on a film set feeling like you have room to take ownership over a moment, to breathe as the character, to not feel like you have to get it right — and it's an important thing for me to feel when I'm on a set.
John is one of those filmmakers that provides that for his actors. He creates a lot of space for breath. He creates a lot of space for exploration and nuance, and interior life and subtlety, and for life to unfold. I felt that when I was first working with him and then it's remained now."
On Diving Into Weighty Notions Such as How People Create a Life, Cherish Their Time Together and Have an Impact in a Romantic Drama
"I love these ideas and I think that you said it perfectly — they are weighty and they are about the meaning of life, and they are about what matters and what doesn't, and how we keep our attention and our hearts trained on that which is nourishing and that which is mysterious and meaningful. So I love these ideas, and I love being able to hang out in them and to ask questions within them, within the question.
And to explore these themes with great artists and collaborators is a dream, and with such great writing. I think that these are the questions that I ask myself on a daily basis anyway.
So it felt very natural to slide into this character's skin, and all of the difficulty and beauty of the experience he was having."
On What Excited Garfield About Starring in We Live in Time as His First On-Screen Project Since 2022's Under the Banner of Heaven
"I think while I was reading the script, and I was reading how this dynamic was unfolding and how it built particularly to the birth scene, I thought 'my gosh, this is such an epic action sequence in domesticity'. I thought: 'oh, man, I want to see this, and how this plays out'.
And there were a few scenes of just deep beauty and tenderness, and funny — they were just so sweetly funny within such pain. And I thought 'that just feels like a balm'.
It feels like a balm for me, as a person that's been through his own grief. But also it will feel like a balm for other people in the audience who are going through their own version of what these people are going through in this film.
So it felt like an act of service. It felt like a real act of service to make this film for myself, but also for an audience, hopefully."
On Building Deep Intimacy with Florence Pugh as Tobias and Almut
"So the writing is very good. The writing was the jumping-off point and thank god it was a great script, otherwise I don't think we'd be talking — I don't think the film would have been made.
So that was the beginning. And then it was me and Florence just finding this natural trust and depth of intimacy and nakedness and vulnerability together. And joy and play together. We can go from being feeling like two childhood friends to feeling like parents. That's a really important thing, I think, for this film.
That was rather easy for us to find together. I think we're both just up for it. We're both just two actors and two people who are just like 'what are we doing today, and how do we make it as fun and as silly and as real and as deep as possible?'.
That's what we came into every day looking for — and not just for ourselves, but for the other, too. We were two actors who really, really loved being a part of the other person flying. And that's a really special thing."
On Ensuring That The Film Tells a Well-Rounded Story That Reflects Life and Is Never a Weepie, Even as It Deals with Love and Mortality
"We didn't want it to feel sentimental or saccharine. We didn't want it to feel imbalanced. We didn't want it to feel manipulative. We wanted it to feel, as you say, like life. We wanted it to be very, very rich, diverse experience that felt like watching life unfold for these two people — in all of the agony and all of the ecstasy and all of the complication.
What's amazing about Florence's character is she's not this lionised, idealised survivor/victim. And I think the same thing with Tobias, he's not some overly soppy, wet, sympathetic, sentimental character.
They both have flaws. They both have fallibility. And they're both deeply human. So that was very, very important for us to keep our eye on."
On What Garfield Was Hoping to Express in the Movie's Pivotal Carpark Scene
"I was hoping to convey just an impossible contradiction in impulses. I think there's no easy path in that moment for these two characters. And for Tobias, I wanted to convey a thousand things at once. I wanted to convey overwhelm. I wanted to convey being unable to offer anything concise or rational or useful.
I wanted to convey deep understanding of where she was while also wanting to kick and scream — and I wanted to convey, on top of that, 'all I've got to do right now is not make this about me. I've just got to listen and I've just got to support and let this moment be this moment, not have an answer'. Just the humility of 'I don't have anything to say here and I'm not going to force it' — like I think most of us want to do in those situations, we want to have a fix-it answer. We want to have some kind final solution.
But I think Tobias, in that moment, is humble enough or overwhelmed enough to be able just to stand there, not having anything to offer apart from comfort."
We Live in Time opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday, January 16, 2025 and in New Zealand cinemas on Thursday, January 23, 2025.