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Review

How Sweet It Is to Cry at “We Live in Time”

The heroines of Love Story and We Live in Time die bravely, humbly, and aesthetically.

Jan Brzozowski

31 January 2025

I only truly understood what cinematic art meant when, at the end of the screening of We Live in Time, I heard, a few rows behind me, not just sobbing—because that was coming from everywhere—but full-on convulsions from one of the viewers. On screen, Florence Pugh was dying so aesthetically that I couldn’t help but turn around indiscreetly. The convulsing person was a woman in her thirties. A few more minutes of collective nose-blowing, and the film was over; the woman in her thirties pushed her way toward the exit, positively glowing. She hadn’t indulged herself like this in a long time…

If you’re familiar with the brilliant essay by Stanisław Barańczak, How Sweet It Is to Cry at Love Story, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve just shamelessly lifted an entire paragraph from it, changing only the name of the actress and the title of the film. I allowed myself this small reference (though some critics might already be muttering the word “plagiarism”) for two reasons.

First, because during the screening of We Live in Time, I experienced an almost identical situation. That immediately triggered my battered brain to think of Barańczak. Second, because that essay is not a traditional film review, but a fascinating attempt to delve into the phenomenon of films like Love Story (back then) or We Live in Time (today). A careful reading of it proves more than invaluable when discussing John Crowley’s melodrama.

we live in time

So, let’s follow Barańczak’s lead. In his search for an answer to why people cry so pleasurably at Love Story, the author mentions a key concept: an appropriate aesthetic order. “The world of Love Story,” Barańczak writes, “thanks to everything that constitutes the language of film—editing, cinematography, music, etc.—strives above all to be a beautiful world. In this context, the dramatic catastrophe of the heroine’s death should have been an opportunity to disrupt this aesthetic order: after all, death, agony, is rarely beautiful, and even without excessive naturalism, the scene could have introduced an element of aesthetic dissonance.” But that doesn’t happen. The heroines of Love Story and We Live in Time die bravely, gracefully, and aesthetically—although, to be fair, Florence Pugh does cough a bit more vigorously on screen and even vomits once or twice.

The reason is simple yet fundamental: the creators (as well as the ideal audience) of these films are not interested in the brutal reality, where dying of cancer means unimaginable suffering, but in an idealized fantasy of it. In the case of We Live in Time, this fantasy comes straight from contemporary romantic comedies: it consists of impeccably white apartment walls, fluffy sweaters, plastic Starbucks coffee cups, and an idyllic countryside cottage always ready to welcome its owners should they feel the urge to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Even the gas station restroom where a childbirth takes place—perhaps the film’s most interesting scene—is remarkably clean and tidy. Everything is beautiful, everything is perfect. Everything except for it: the famous carousel horse.

We Live in Time and the famous carousel horse

The moment it appeared on screen, I couldn’t help but smile. It doesn’t get much screen time—just a single shot, off to the side of the frame—but it’s a miracle it remained at all. Its comically distorted face suddenly shatters the carefully constructed illusion, creating a cosmic rupture in the imposed aesthetic order. As if, into the perfect world of our melodramatic-romantic fantasies, some monstrous, imperfect reality had suddenly intruded. The filmmakers did everything they could to erase the wretched horse. The creature was consistently removed from promotional materials, sometimes in particularly sneaky ways. But erasing it from the audience’s memory proved impossible—the carousel element quickly became an internet meme and took on a life of its own (a fact that A24, the film’s distributor, eagerly capitalized on by selling T-shirts featuring its image).

we live in time

Let’s return to Barańczak for a moment. “Any conflict that arises here,” he writes, “always—and usually quite quickly—turns into reconciliation and stability; it serves merely to highlight the fact that harmony is always preferable to discord and strife.” Sound familiar? We Live in Time revolves around two central conflicts: one concerns the possibility of having a child, the other, self-actualization in the face of a terminal illness. Both resolve themselves almost effortlessly (we never doubt for a moment that they will—not just because of the genre conventions, but also due to the film’s non-linear narrative). Harmony, reconciliation, and stability triumph. In the moving finale, everyone stands united, blade to blade, bravely facing death together.

And just like in Love Story, no one here harbors resentment toward fate: “neither the dying heroine nor the grieving hero… It is what it is, they seem to say—since misfortune has befallen us, let’s face it with dignity.” A protagonist who accepts their fate does not plunge us into the kind of “metaphysical anxiety” that would be so unwelcome in a melodrama or romantic comedy. And so, we cry—comfortably and freely, at peace with ourselves, convinced—just like Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh—that this is exactly how things were meant to be. The director and screenwriter never considered any other outcome.

At the end of his essay, Barańczak notes that despite all of Love Story’s flaws and imperfections, “this tear-jerking machine, functioning so perfectly and efficiently,” does possess one undeniable value: a didactic one. “It teaches that sentimentality has never toppled a Bastille; that its true nature lies in the desire to maintain the existing state of affairs.” More than fifty years later, We Live in Time —an equally efficient and perfect machine—teaches us something else: that no matter what happens in cinema, melodramas about Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie will always find their devoted audience—one that will happily weep over them, taking full advantage of the blissful anonymity of the movie theater.

Janek Brzozowski

Jan Brzozowski

Permanently sleep-deprived, as he absorbs either westerns or new adventure cinema at night. A big fan of the acting skills of James Dean and Jimmy Stewart, and the beauty of Ryan Gosling and Elle Fanning. He is also interested in American and French literature, as well as soccer.

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