In the romantic-drama We Live In Time, Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) are brought together in a surprise encounter that changes their lives. Through snapshots of their life together – falling for each other, building a home, becoming a family – a difficult truth is revealed that rocks its foundation. As they embark on a path challenged by the limits of time, they learn to cherish each moment of the unconventional route their love story has taken, in filmmaker John Crowley’s decade-spanning, deeply moving romance.
As We Live In Time releases in Australian cinemas on January 16, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s director, John Crowley, about reuniting with Andrew Garfield after 17 years, reworking the non-linear structure in the editing phase, and the discourse regarding sex scenes in films.
Nick: John, it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you! How are you today?
John Crowley: Pretty good, thanks. How are you?
Nick: I’m doing very well thank you. I’d love to kick things off by talking about the stories non-linear structure. We Live In Time isn’t the first film of yours that has played out in a non-linear format, if you look back at Boy A or The Goldfinch. Time is a prevalent theme in your work, so I’m curious to know how your use of time as a storytelling device has evolved over time, up until this film.
John Crowley: I mean, I hope it has evolved! The first film I did it with, Boy A, was a very particular thing because it was set between two time periods in order to create the sense of what happened to this kid to get him where he is. There was this sort of moral thriller unfolding as it was going on. And The Goldfinch was hard because most people felt that jumping back and forth didn’t help it emotionally. That it felt somehow to compressed, and maybe should’ve been a mini-series. I don’t know. That’s another podcast episode!
But this one is more sophisticated than that, because it’s shuffling around the time, but it’s not just about a clever storytelling device. The aim is to somehow express something of what happens in a relationship if time becomes shortened, and you get a vague horizon of how much time is left in your life. If you have six months left, what does that mean to the two people experiencing it?
Rather that just telling a story about somebody’s decline or a romantic story about two people getting together, it was about stacking those two and show as many different sorts of facets of that relationship within two hours. It’s almost like looking at a cubist painting. You’re seeing something from multiple perspectives simultaneously, hopefully.
Nick: As we mentioned Boy A, what was it like working with Andrew Garfield again after over 15 years?
John Crowley: Yeah, he said it was 17 years since we had worked together. It was amazing. He’s gone on to do extraordinary things in that time, and also turned from a boy into a man, you know? He has kept working on himself, and also who he is as an actor.
The degree of ambition for the work is still as hungry as he ever was. Back then, he was a kid who was sort of looking out into the world going, “Am I ever going to get what I need to get done with my work?” And now, he’s been on so many extraordinary film sets. It’s really about the quality of work he wants to engage with, but he’s still as hungry as an actor as he was back then. It’s quite something.
Nick: Going back briefly to the non-linear elements, I’m curious to know how much the film changed from Nick Payne’s script, to what we see on screen. Was there any restructuring of the film to help enhance the emotional aspects of the story?
John Crowley: There was quite a bit of restructuring in the edit. But it should be said that Nick’s script had the three time frames over the five or six years of this relationship. So, that was all there. But when we actually started to edit it, we felt the beginning was wrong, the end was wrong. Everything was in the wrong order.
So, what was already a jumbled order, we had to break apart like a Lego set and start putting it back together. The beginning was previously in the fairground, and then the end was in the fairground. It was this sort of bookmarked ending that didn’t quite work, or didn’t quite feel right. A lot of choices were made that just made it feel like a different film.
And it’s not like we were trying to make a different story, but suddenly it was just okay. We needed it to work with more of an emotional logic, because you have these two extraordinary performances, you’ve got great camera work, you’ve got all these extra communicative elements, but what the original blueprint of the script was ended up becoming something that began to take on its own life, and that’s the film we have.
Nick: I’ve heard many filmmakers say that a film is made three times. When it’s written, when it’s filmed, and when it’s edited…
John Crowley: There is no better example of that than this. We really did have three distinct sort of processes, and yet, they’re all to the same end. There are many examples of films where the editing process is all about finding a new version of the film when the two previous versions don’t work.
But for this one, it was more about how do we refine the balance between the form and the content in a way that’s more of a playful invitation to an audience, and let them experience the time structure in a way that will work as it originally was intended.
Nick: I’d love to breakdown a scene with you, and it’s one that got a great, but unexpected laugh from the audience, and that’s when Tobias is hit by the car. The way a man of his height seemingly towers over the mini, but also the way he rolls and bounces off the car is quite good comedy. What goes into the visual language of having that be an important moment in the characters lives, but also work in a humorous sense?
John Crowley: Well, if we take a step back and look at why we wound up doing it the way we did was because there was a whole layer of locations within the story which were referring to as ‘liminal spaces’. There are empty roads, Holiday Inn style hotels, petrol stations, the Weetabix office. They are all spaces you pass through, and they have nothing to do with connection or intimacy. They’re often lonely spaces, but are very expressive of contemporary England, or Australia, or anywhere else. There’s a particular personality that we wanted to get with that.
So, when it came to the knocking down sequence, we wanted to do two things with it. One is for it to be shocking and not do it with a cut. We would use a bit of sleight of hand, but it’s a single locked off camera observing this bloke, on the road, in a ratty bathrobe from his hotel, with pens and a Terry’s choc-orange in his hands. And that’s the second thing –the absurdity of these unusual meet cute.
They’re the reasons why. One is that personality of the location, and then the rest is the tone, of which we wanted to go for this certain kind of Hal Ashby-esque dryness all happening in the one frame. And it’s something you’re not expecting, hopefully. We worked hard to make sure there wasn’t this unconscious signal of something is going to happen here. It just happens.
Nick: I’m not sure how aware you are of the discourse online about sex scenes or intimate scenes in films. Some people find them unnecessary, while other argue they are integral to narratives. Since there are some, what I think, pretty important intimate scenes in this film, what is your take on how to make sure the sex we see in film is relevant or important to the story and characters?
John Crowley: For me, an intimate scene works if it’s a bit like what Steven Sondheim said about musicals, which is, “When people can’t speak their emotions, they sing them. And when they can’t sing their emotions, they dance their emotions.” And that’s how musicals work. There’s this kind of vertical take-off, and if you don’t believe the point of pressure that leads you from one expression to another, that’s where you get those terrible moments in musicals where you go, “Oh my God, that person just burst into song for no reason! Why are they dancing around?”
On film, it can be as tough as it is on the stage as well. You need a degree of emotional release in the scene, and it has to be specific. And what I loved about the two completely different intimate scenes that are in this film, is that the first one is in the very early stages of a relationship where these two people can’t keep their hands off of each other. It’s funny, absurd, playfully bashing into each other, almost form of fumbling sex. But the intention between both of them is sheer lust, and it’s just that. And it’s allowed to be that. It’s not objectified. It’s just that.
And then the other scene is four and a half years into a relationship, and she’s about to undergo treatment, and she’s very scared of it. And she broaches the possibility of having sex in that context creates a very different scene. The choreography of the scene was consequently different. The emotional tenor of it was very different, and I loved that we actually had the chance in the film of showing that the actual nature of their relationship is expressed as lucidly in the way in which they make love. You understand those scenes aren’t about objectification. But I understand when people realise that intimate scenes don’t work, and feel a bit gratuitous, perhaps.
Thank you to John for his time, and to StudioCanal for organising the interview. We Live In Time is in Australian cinemas from January 16.
