Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

We Live in Time Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 3, 2025

Amazon is also offering a wide release of this title.

Note: While even writer Nick Payne and director John Crowley more or less dispense with any potential arguments about "spoilers" in their commentary, overtly mentioning how this film's unusual structure "lets the cat out of the bag" in terms of a major plot development within the film's first few minutes, those averse to any discussions of that plot point, among others, are encouraged to watch the film before reading this review.

It may be hard for younger folks in particular to realize, but the admittedly pretty "simple" and "basic" Love Story was a cultural phenomenon the likes of which hadn't been seen in years, maybe decades, when the book first appeared in February 1970 and then the film version was released right before Christmas that year, becoming the "holiday film" of 1970 (leaving more expected seasonal fare like Scrooge in the box office dust in the process). The overwhelming success of Love Story might be thought of as occurring either because of or despite a somewhat depressive plot line. And here's the really interesting part, at least for closet sociologists — everyone knew the "big secret" about Love Story going in, namely that the general outlines of the plot were boy meets girl, they fall in love and marry, and the girl then dies. Love Story was compared to so-called "three hankie weepies" from the veritable days of yore, but in terms of foreknowledge of plot machinations, it's arguable that Love Story was very much in a class by itself, since the tragic trajectory of Oliver and Jenny's doomed romance was really the entire emotional arc of the narrative. In that regard, it might be cheekily suggested that the famous tag line of Love Story, one so hilariously parodied in everything from The Carol Burnett Show 's send up of the movie to What's Up, Doc?, where Barbra Streisand impishly states it to Ryan O'Neal, might be "reconfigured" to describe We Live in Time as sorry you're means love say to never having, or something similarly out of whack in terms of "normal" grammar. That's because while this film indeed follows the same basic tragic trajectory of a doomed romance as the long ago Erich Segal tale did, the film toys with structure, delivering several different timeframes "colliding" with each other, so that the announcement of a cancer diagnosis for focal female Almut Brühl (Florence Pugh) comes very early in the film despite happening somewhat later in a more "traditional" narrative chronology, and butts up against vignettes documenting both Almut's romance with Tobias Durand (Andrew Garfield), but also her pregnancy.

What might seem at first glance to be nothing much more than a structural conceit actually ends up providing quite a bit of emotional heft to these proceedings, since in this case there's a "self delivered" foreknowledge of what awaits Tobias and Almut, at least if "await" is accepted in its traditional chronological meaning. There's one of the more peculiar examples of "meeting cute" offered in one of the many cartwheeling moments the screenplay doles out at various junctures, as Almut runs into a befuddled Tobias with her car, badly injuring him. Tobias is also dealing with the wake of his impending divorce, but soon enough he and Almut realize some kind of spark and they move in together, and experience (as the making of supplement kind of mawkishly mentions) the "highs and lows" of being a couple.

There are perhaps some curious parallels between this film and Here , at least in terms of a deliberately disjunctive time frame and emphasis on a relatively limited set of locales, though We Live in Time probably does get "out and about" more as it explores what might be thought of as formative moments in the couple's history. Those include (in chronological fashion, definitely not the way things are presented in the film) that aforementioned little car "incident", a halting and actually faltering courtship, cohabitation (though never marriage), cancer diagnoses (yep, more than one), and a child's birth in an unfortunate location, in what Andrew Garfield kind of hilariously mentions in the making of supplement included on this disc is the film's "big action sequence". It's also fascinating to hear the aforementioned commentary by Payne and Crowley get into some of the nuts and bolts of what was evidently a difficult edit, and it sure sounds like the film's various timeframes and vignette driven structure led to some unplanned exercises in montage theory, with those famous Syd Field screenplay cards tacked up on a bulletin board and given various "locations" as different potential edits were explored.

What actually struck me, though, about this approach toward storytelling is how emotionally visceral it made Almut's situation. In Love Story, yeah, you knew that Jenny was a goner from the get go, but even with an unavoidably impending sense of doom, there still seemed to be "space" (held or otherwise, and, yes, that's a Wicked joke) to get to her ultimate demise. Here, everything is unspooled quite quickly at the beginning, with additional follow ups to a number of explored nooks and crannies of the relationship. It ends up being a probably undeniably showy and audacious but still devastating way to offer a narrative.

We Live in Time Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

We Live in Time is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of A24 with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. As of the writing of this review the IMDb lists the Arri Alexa as having been utilized, but fails to specify the resolution of the DI. One way or the other, this is a really appealing looking presentation, one that offers typically excellent clarity and some really nice fine detail levels, while also providing nice support for a rather widely variant palette. There are a number of interesting grading choices on display, including some cool blue tones (as in the opening scene with Almut on a jog) to more buttery warm yellows (as in several of the romancing sequences), and commendably detail levels don't really tend to ebb that much even with these choices. There's also a lot of more naturally lit and/or graded material, all of which looks great. I noticed no compression issues.

We Live in Time Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's maybe a little surprising that We Live in Time features a Dolby Atmos track, and in fact as a Dolby Atmos track it may frankly not be the "showiest", though as a surround track, it's really rather effective, establishing good spatial relationships even in some pretty cloistered environments, but then also opening things up quite a bit in scenes that utilize ambient environmental effects. There are quite a few source cues by various performers (none overly familiar to me) and underscore by Bryce Dessner, all of which typically engage the side and rear channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

We Live in Time Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Filmmaker Commentary with Director John Crowley and Writer Nick Payne


• A Whole Life: The Making of We Live in Time (HD; 9:41) is a decent EPK with some fun interviews and behind the scenes footage.

This A24 exclusive edition is housed in a DigiPack which offers six art cards enclosed in the opening cover sleeve (I personally found them very difficult to extract from the sleeve, but that difficulty at least alerted me to the fact that there's actually a kind of funny diptych photo on the inside). The DigiPack is itself housed in a slipbox.

We Live in Time Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It is completely arguable that the structural artifice of We Live in Time is nothing other than a gimmick, and some may find it such a gimmick that it may detract from the actual story. I found the disjunctive approach to be both effective and emotionally gut punching on several occasions. Technical merits are first rate and both the commentary and brief making of supplement are enjoyable. Recommended.