When Irish filmmaker John Crowley first read Nick Payne’s script for “We Live in Time,” a stirring story of a couple facing a cancer diagnosis, one moment stopped him in his tracks. “The scene in the petrol station—the birth of the baby—was the scene that made me want to make the film,” he says.
Andrew Garfield stars as Tobias, a divorcé who gets a second chance at romance with Almut (Florence Pugh), a renowned chef. Having previously directed Garfield in the 2007 drama “Boy A,” Crowley knew that the actor was perfect for the role because of “how comfortable he is with his own emotions.” Garfield also had personal experience with grief, having lost his mother to cancer in 2019.
Though there are heavy moments in “We Live in Time,” Crowley wanted to make space for another of Garfield’s talents. “He’s very funny and a great physical comedian. We don’t always see that side of him when he is doing emotional work.”
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The filmmaker tapped Pugh thanks to her history of playing strong women. He thought it would be interesting to see the Oscar nominee combine that forcefulness with vulnerability when Almut reaches the late stages of her illness.
Though Pugh’s instinct was to play the role with a lot more outward emotion, Crowley asked her to rein it in; he told her to avoid fully breaking down so the ending would have a greater impact. “I was like, ‘Hold it back, because you two are in different places. Tobias is a more emotional creature than you are. But when you crack, it will be profound.’ And she did it beautifully,” he recalls.
The film’s nonlinear structure, which skips between three different times in Almut and Tobias’ relationship, allowed Crowley to experiment with tonal shifts. “A lot of illness films tend to follow quite a straight path from wellness to unwellness; you see a decline. That was never the game with this story,” he says. “The point is to see how two people make meaning out of their remaining time together after mortality comes and taps them on the shoulder.”
The director compares this approach to the work of late filmmaker Nicolas Roeg (“Don’t Look Now,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth”), whom he considers to be a master of jumping between timelines. “I hope that by the end of ‘We Live in Time,’ you feel like you’ve seen something from six perspectives at the same time—almost like seeing a Cubist painting,” Crowley says.
The scene that first captivated him, in which Almut gives birth in a tiny public restroom, was shot on a soundstage over the course of two days. The filmmaker says it required intricate preparation. He began by enlisting the help of Penny Taylor, a professional midwife who consults on screen projects depicting birth. (The two previously collaborated on the 2022 BBC drama “Life After Life.”)
Crowley says Taylor was a “wonderfully direct, tough-but-warm presence on set” who put Pugh at ease, guiding the actor through what giving birth feels like anatomically. At the end of the second day, the production brought in a real infant who was only a couple of weeks old for Garfield and Pugh to hold. After the last take, the child fell asleep in their arms.
“This little baby shifted the central gravity of the scene and took it to a whole other level of reality,” Crowley recalls. “It was pure life.”
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 10 issue of Backstage Magazine.