We Live in Time (2024)

directed by John Crowley

Lynn Marsh

“You have to go see the new Andrew Garfield movie,” my friend tells me for the third time this week. She insists it’s a film that will break me open and set me free.

Opening up and letting a film—or any piece of art—affect me has always been terrifying. I am known as the one who isn't good with feelings. Yet, on a chilly Wednesday afternoon, I find myself sitting four rows away from the big screen in a Midtown theatre. It’s more crowded than usual for a Wednesday, and people have come prepared with tissues, in addition to the ones handed to us at the entrance. The tissue package has a message printed on it, already stirring something in me—more than I want to admit: "It's OK not to be OK." Six words that sum up what we all desperately need to hear.

The film begins, and I brace myself for what my friend called "the film that will feel different to each of us." From the very start, I see what she meant. Almut and Tobias’s memories feel untouched, raw—almost empty, as if inviting the audience to layer them with their own. A dangerous feeling for someone so determined to seal off her heart and mind.

The screen shifts to a crucial scene: dressed all in black, looking nervous, Almut sits with Tobias, explaining her diagnosis and the choices that could affect their ability to conceive. Tobias, a man who always dreamed of being a father, listens. Yet, in this moment, he does not let his dream dictate his love for her. He seems to be stepping back for her to choose regardless of the outcome, this coming from the man who was self sabotaging their relationship on the basis of them disagreeing on wanting kids very early in their relationship.

It hits a sensitive spot.

I’m taken back to my own memory, sitting on my bed with my partner two years ago, explaining how my surgery could take away my ability to bear children. I lowered my gaze, expecting the man who had always dreamed of fatherhood to walk away.

But he didn’t.

He held my hand gently and said, "My wants should never be the reason you jeopardize your life."

I was so touched, so overwhelmed with love, that I confessed something I had barely admitted to myself. Though I had never wanted children, though I had known this about myself since I was a child, that changed when he came into my life.

He held me as I wept, knowing this hurt me as much as it hurt him. Softly, he whispered, "We’ll find ways—together."

On screen, Almut confesses something similar—though she never wanted kids, that doesn’t mean she never pictured having them with Tobias. The bittersweet familiarity of her words nearly drives me from the theatre. The past, unearthed so effortlessly, threatens to consume me.

I loved more than I will ever admit.

And the sting of knowing that love is gone, that he is out there loving someone else, burns. But in that scene, in that moment preserved in time, I find an ironic comfort. It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. A cliché, perhaps, but as I look around at the tear-streaked faces in the audience—some dull with grief, some breaking under the weight of it—I understand. Love, and the sacrifices it demands, are universal.

“Do you know the best way to crack an egg?" Almut asks Tobias. He shakes his head. She smiles and says, "Always on a flat surface." At first, the line seems like nothing more than a simple exchange between a passionate chef and the man falling in love with her. It almost fades into the background—until later, after Almut is gone, when Tobias teaches their daughter the very same thing.

The weight of the moment sinks in, and the entire audience begins sobbing as the scene plays out. I feel a single tear stream down my face, and suddenly and soon it feels like a dam breaks inside me. The sobs rush in.

I'm taken back in time—to a little girl sitting beside her grandmother, preparing the signature dish everyone in the family knew her for. I watch as she kneads the dough over and over, her movements effortless, almost magical. She removes the dough and places it on a tray, leaving a small piece stuck at the bottom of her floral-patterned vintage bowl.

"Do you know what this is for?" she asks, pointing to the leftover piece. I shake my head. She smiles tenderly, takes the dough ball, and traces it over the small piece—lifting it effortlessly, leaving the bowl empty.

"It's how I know my dough is perfect," she explains.

I nod, mesmerized, before my sister’s voice calls me away to watch our favorite cartoon. I think back to this moment every time I make her signature dish, 13 years after she is gone, and yet she is still here. I look at the dark screen as I cry, thinking of how deeply Tobias had loved Almut and how deeply I loved my grandmother, a sense of comfort seeps in as the tears stop, knowing that I have been someone to bear witness to this great woman whom I was blessed to love. To be her imprint on this world, to love and carry that love with me one dish at a time.

The film nears its end.

Simple scenes of a house—its living room, its hallway, its kitchen—speak volumes of Almut’s absence. Tobias walks through the garden with Ella, their daughter, picking eggs from the chicken coop. He moves through the house and into the kitchen, mirroring a morning routine we saw earlier in the film.

My heart clenches.

I think of all the ghost spots in my life—the spaces where loved ones once stood, now hauntingly empty.

I recall a passage from André Aciman’s novel Call Me By Your Name, where Elio describes the places his father used to sit—where he had breakfast, read his paper, spent his days. These spaces become ghost spots, preserving the time his father spent there, untouched by life’s relentless march forward. And later think to himself how almost every corner in his villa is a ghost spot of his lover, every corner, every room he passed in. Preserve the time they shared together untouched from the treads of life. Everyone around me is sobbing and perhaps though they don’t realize it, their minds are drifting to the ghost spots of their lost loved one. My friend said the film will break me open and set me free, the notion setting in as the reminder that all that was gone from my life never really washed away with the waves of time. Instead those memories preserved in time and place, emphasizing how the ones who were truly loved are never really gone. They are preserved, living forever in time...

Lynn Marsh is a published author, screenwriter, and playwright. She is the creator of the film.io platform project "unreported" and author of the short novel the prophet who disagreed with god.