We Live in Time · reception & legacy

How We Live in Time has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Landed at TIFF 2024 as a well-liked but conventional tearjerker — then its own marketing swallowed it, and it's now remembered as much for the memes and the Garfield–Pugh press tour as for the movie itself. The film-fan defence that it's better than its 'A24 does Nicholas Sparks' reputation is already underway.

What's debated

The perennial fight: is the scrambled timeline a genuinely moving formal choice, or a prestige coat of paint on a standard-issue cancer weepie?

Its footprint

The carousel horse. A promotional still of Garfield and Pugh kissing beside a deranged-looking fairground horse went so viral that A24 leaned in and merchandised it — the horse arguably has a bigger cultural afterlife than any scene in the film. Add Andrew Garfield's swooned-over Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg during the press run, and this is a film whose social life happened mostly outside the cinema.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd-era comfort-cry pick — logged with broken-heart emojis and horse jokes in equal measure — rather than a canon contender.