Film Talk: Garfield and Pugh lead tear-jerking charge with We Live In Time
I'll say it now – I miss his Spider-Man.
We all know that Tom Holland has done a fantastic job, and indeed rose to be one of the shining lights of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). But when I first saw Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man, I just felt like this was the Pete for me.
With the man himself opposite Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Garfield's 2012 Spider-Man flick was a breath of fresh air for the character, followed up in 2014 with a star-spangled sequel.
However, the following year Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios initiated a deal to share the Spider-Man film rights and reboot the character within the MCU, cancelling future projects in The Amazing Spider-Man film series. Tom Holland would succeed Garfield as the fabled web slinger, beginning with an appearance in 2016's Captain America: Civil War.
Garfield's Peter Parker would return for a multiversal cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, yet it does not seem like we will ever see him stand alone as the friendly, neighbourhood crime fighter ever again. While I do somewhat lament this, it does have to be said that Andrew Garfield's lack of a tie to a superhero IP has given him the chance to shine in some impressive projects. His Academy Award-nominated turn in Hacksaw Ridge was outstanding, as was his performance in crime drama miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven. Maybe it was for the best after all. Indeed, why crawl up walls when you can fly?
In our top spot this week, Andy Pandy is starring opposite the force of talent that is Florence Pugh in a heart-wrenching tale of love, loss and, also, laughter.
Directed by John Crowley from a screenplay by Nick Payne, We Live In Time is punching hard for the emotional vote from film fans looking for a crimbo limbo tearjerker. But despite the pedigree of its stars, does it bring the right wallop? Let's take a look...
WE LIVE IN TIME (UK 15/ROI 15A, 107 mins) ****
Released: January 1 (UK & Ireland)
In 2012, playwright Nick Payne debuted his metaphysical love story Constellations, which elegantly charts the burgeoning romance between a quantum physicist and a beekeeper, who meet at a barbecue and tumble through a multiverse of relationship possibilities including one timeline punctuated by terminal illness.
A rumoured film adaptation never materialised but more than a decade later, Payne revisits key motifs from his award-winning stage work in the screenplay for We Live In Time.
Galvanised by electrifying chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, director John Crowley’s superior tear-jerker is a chronologically fractured meditation on mortality, which invites us to contemplate the invisible stopwatch that dictates when our brief sojourn in this chaotic, overwhelming world must end.
A deluge of tears are shed on screen, predominantly by Garfield, and expect to hear sobs echoing across cinemas as characters stoically wrestle with the ramifications of a stage three ovarian cancer diagnosis.
Payne’s decision to pinball through time denies the film a conventional crescendo but does allow him to juxtapose scenes of rage, regret and reminiscence.
He also repositions a hilarious and heartwarming centrepiece – the birth of a baby girl in a petrol station toilet aided by two encouraging staff (Kerry Godliman, Nikhil Parmar) – to the dewy-eyed final act. However, scheduling two major life events in the film on exactly the same date feels like dramatic contrivance rather than credible coincidence.
Breakfast cereal brand IT master Tobias (Garfield) moves in with his architect father Reginald (Douglas Hodge) to emotionally regroup after his marriage falls apart.
In the process of signing divorce papers, Tobias is involved in a bizarre car accident with ambitious chef Almut (Pugh).
A giddy, whirlwind romance, set in motion by a chance collision on a motorway, turns both of their lives upside down but feverish thoughts of the future are curtailed by Almut’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
Fortune initially favours the lovers and they welcome a cherubic daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), into the world after Almut goes into remission.
However, the cancer metastasises and the chef faces a stark choice between aggressive courses of chemotherapy and surgery, with no guarantee of success, or six months of treatment-free memories including a chance to compete at the biennial Bocuse d’Or – the Olympics of international gastronomy – with her commis Jade (Lee Braithwaite).
We Live In Time presents an artfully composed menu of misunderstandings, reconciliations and self-reflection.
Garfield and Pugh are the star ingredients, fiercely committed to baring their characters’ souls including a steamy scene of tasteful nudity with a generously proportioned pack of Jaffa cakes.
Payne’s script doesn’t defy expectations or conjure medical miracles but is garnished with impeccably polished dialogue that warrants every second of our precious time.
NOSFERATU (UK 15/ROI 16, 132 mins) ***
Released: December 27 (UK & Ireland)
In literature and on screen, vampires are often depicted as sensual and alluring creatures of the night, armed with the power of hypnosis to woo potential victims into a compliant fugue and quash resistance to tapered dentistry plunging into a jugular vein.
Director Robert Eggers’ visually resplendent remake of FW Murnau’s 1922 silent Gothic melodrama, itself an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that resulted in a copyright infringement lawsuit from the author’s estate, employs similar seduction techniques.
From the mesmerising dream sequence that opens the film, Nosferatu ravishes the senses, beginning with Jarin Blaschke’s stunning colour-drained cinematography that relies on flickering candlelight, firelight and moonlight to illuminate actors’ faces and conceal horror in the shadows.
Occasional splashes of suppressed red herald the inevitable bloodletting.
Production designer Craig Lathrop and costume designer Linda Muir are skilled collaborators from Eggers’ previous films, conveying the decaying finery of 19th-century Europe as composer Robin Carolan’s elegiac orchestral score marries mournful strings with choral swells.
Eggers’ script is a valentine to the 1922 picture but dilutes the sustained menace of Murnau’s vision, concealing actor Bill Skarsgard beneath layers of prosthetics as the titular Transylvanian aristocrat with a booming east European accent as thick as black treacle.
Some of the supporting performances are left to shiver in the cold and never thaw out but Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp are handsomely matched as newlyweds in the vice-like grip of a vampire’s obsession.
In 1838 Germany, real estate broker Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) entreats his employee Thomas Hutter (Hoult) to travel to the snow-laden Carpathian mountains to secure the signature of enigmatic nobleman Count Orlok (Skarsgard) on a property sale in the German city of Wisborg.
Thomas leaves his blushing bride Ellen (Depp) in the care of good friend Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin).
The young man barely survives the exhausting trip to Europe and stumbles home to find his beautiful wife Ellen driven to delirium by a telepathic bond to the Count.
“The night demon has supped of your good wife’s blood,” pithily surmises occult expert Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe).
The maniacal medic conceives a hare-brained plan to break Orlok’s hold over Ellen before the nocturnal predator consummates their unholy connection.
Nosferatu exsanguinates substance to dazzle us with style, paying homage to Murnau’s film by replicating the striking imagery of the Count’s gnarled shadow gliding upstairs and along corridors towards unsuspecting prey.
McBurney flirts enthusiastically with madness while Dafoe chews hungrily on dialogue that teeters on risible: “I have seen things that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!”
Compared to Eggers’ terrifying 2015 folk horror The Witch, scares are mild and infrequent.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 (UK PG/ROI PG, 110 mins) ***
Released: December 27 (UK & Ireland)
Two Jim Carreys for the price of one in returning director Jeff Fowler’s turbo-charged threequel sounds like a Boxing Day deal to grasp with both paws.
Ultimately, you get what you pay for in Sonic The Hedgehog 3, a wholly satisfying resolution to the feud between the eponymous blue hedgehog and his outrageously moustachioed nemesis, crammed to bursting with dizzying action sequences and a wholesome message about trusting your moral compass.
Screenwriters Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington hark back to the video games for a conventional tale of good versus evil that empowers Carrey to make merry as mad scientist Dr Robotnik and his long-lost grandfather, two chips off the same old block of virtuoso comic showboating.
While Carrey doesn’t unhinge as furiously as The Mask, he shamelessly pickpockets scenes from digitally rendered critters and sneaks in an emotional wallop just as the special effects wizardry goes into hyperdrive.
In stark contrast, Keanu Reeves underplays his vengeful spiny antagonist with a slosh of righteous fury.
Good, wholesome, animated fun to round off the trilogy.
