I’ve never been much of a fan of the cancer drama — the maudlin but massively successful Love Story set the stage for the genre in 1970, starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. These movies have reared their ugly heads a number of times since. They tend to indulge in a little class or generation clashing along with the dying young and jerking tears. Now we have another example.
We Live In Time is from Irish-born John Crowley (Brooklyn), and indulges in many of the sentimental tropes of these kinds of movies — Florence Pugh is a successful chef and restaurateur with the odd name, Almut, and Andrew Garfield is the more reserved and bookish Tobias. They have a ridiculous meet-cute — she actually hits him with her Mini while he’s out purchasing pens so he can sign his divorce papers. The score by The National’s Bryce Dessner is tasteful and manipulative, and the British middlebrowness of it all is practically obscene.
It’s also a fantastic movie. I can’t deny it — the last 20 minutes absolutely destroyed me.
The story of Almut and Tobias is told in a non-linear fashion, which undercuts a lot of the schmaltz, and the shifting juxtapositions of illness and romance make the picture a tapestry of emotion that builds to the point of overwhelming. It also does something incredibly deftly, and that’s to shift the central focus from him to her in a way that makes her eventual journey entirely empowering rather than tragic. It also features an all-timer of a birth scene in a gas station bathroom, and makes devastating choices in the final few scenes that undercut the expectations of deathbed tears and typical terms of endearment.
Finally, it casts Pugh and Garfield at the very peak of their powers, and has us fall in love with them as they fall in love with each other. We Live In Time is an instant classic — I loved it entirely despite myself.
The TIFF marketing language sets up Men of War as “Rambo meets Fyre Fest,” telling the story of Toronto-born American mercenary Jordan Goudreau’s efforts in 2020 to invade Venezuela and overthrow President Nicolás Maduro — partnering with Venezuelan ex-pats, arms dealers, and operating with the explicit support of high-ranking members of the American government. The coup d’etat went poorly, leading to the death and capture of many of Goudreau’s soldiers of fortune. Directors Billy Corben and Jen Gatien can’t resist framing the whole affair as faintly comedic — they paint Goudreau as at best out of his depth with his mission’s political machinations, and at worst a clown with a war-movie fixation. Then, in the last act, the doc takes a turn to the earnest, showing how Goudreau lives with both PTSD and a lot of guilt for having messed up his wildly well-financed black op. Goudreau is a fascinating character to be at the centre of this story, and you could argue the filmmakers give him just enough rope to hang himself — while they make a joke of his ill-advised mission then turn him into an object of pity.
