We Live In Time: Cork's John Crowley on his film with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield
John Crowley at the Irish premiere of We Live In Time at the Everyman as part of Cork International Film Festival. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan
When director John Crowley attended the Irish premiere of his new film We Live in Time at the Everyman theatre for Cork International Film Festival in November, it brought back happy memories. The last time the 55-year-old had been in that MacCurtain Street venue was for a viewing of Dirty Dancing in 1987.
Back then, the Douglas teenager would jump on the bus to take regular trips to the various cinemas that were dotted around his home city. Later, he'd broaden his horizons with artier offerings at Triskel, and annual visits to the city’s film festival, which introduced him to the likes of David Lynch and Jane Campion.
Crowley wouldn’t have described himself as film buff in those years, and would soon take a major detour into theatre, but that formative time on Leeside helped lay the foundations for an impressive career. He has gone on to helm such widely-praised movies as Intermission (2003), Boy A (2007) and Brooklyn (2015), as well as the less-well-received adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch (2019).
We Live in Time stars Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh in a time-jumping tale of particularly eventful instalments in a couple’s relationship. Don’t let its billing as a romantic comedy fool you. The film does have romance, and some laugh-out-loud moments but there is so much more going on that gives We Live In Time extra weight and an appeal beyond the traditional romcom audience.
While it’s Crowley’s first time working with Pugh, the Corkman was delighted to reunite with Garfield, the actor for whom he had provided a breakthrough role in Boy A.
They had kept in touch since that Channel 4-financed film about a young murderer trying to put his life back together following his release from prison. “We’d talked about doing other things along the way, and none of them sort of worked out. And then with this script, I really felt like it plays to a lot of his strengths,” says Crowley.
Garfield didn’t take much persuasion, and his female co-star signed up soon after. Before any announcements were made about We Live In Time, the pair had already set social media ablaze with their chummy banter while announcing two Academy Awards at the 2023 ceremony.
“Twitter went mad, going ‘You’ve got to find a film for them’,” recalls Crowley. “And I was like, ‘Hang on, we're going to start shooting one in about five weeks’ time!’”
The instincts of both Crowley and the Twitterati have been proved right by the finished version of We Live In Time. The easy rapport Garfield and Pugh portrayed at the Oscars had obviously evolved into a full-blown chemistry by the time it got to making some of the heart-melting scenes in the film.
Because both actors are in such demand, Crowley and co had a tight schedule for the shoot, so the director was happy to see his stars quickly click into the roles able to make intense scenes work in just a few takes. “You just sort of create the right space for the two of them, clear all the stuff out of their island, all the crap out of the way, so that every day they would walk onto that set, and the only thing to do would be to fall into the scene,” he explains.
One of the other talking points of the film will be the non-linear story-telling as the action switches between three different timelines. This approach keeps an audience on their toes in terms of engagement, and must surely create challenges for the filmmakers too.
Crowley was hands-on with the early drafts of the film with writer Nick Payne and was happy to put the extra work in to ensure the various strands would come together for an audience. “It felt like the shuttling of the time was not just a gimmick, that it was true to the nature of their relationship and the way in which they're trying to figure out their relationship to time,” says Crowley.
An early test screening led to some more tweaks before the final edit, and the director also points to the importance of how the music is used in the film to provide aural clues to the audience. Crowley enlisted the help of Bryce Dessner for this process. The Cincinnati musician is best known as part of The National with his twin brother Aaron, but is also an accomplished composer of film scores, and even has a Cork connection through his work on the southern city’s biennial Sounds From A Safe Harbour festival.
“Bryce came and sat in the edit room in London with me, with his guitar and with his sampler,” recalls Crowley. “He literally played along to the film at times and shaped certain cues around the actual cut as it was. So it was a very happy, very organic process.” The result is an impressive mix of Dessner’s original compositions, and some well-placed other tunes, most notably a powerful moment featuring ‘Everything I Am Is Yours’ by Irish group Villagers.
Early reaction to We Live In Time has largely been positive. This must come as a relief considering Crowley’s previous project, The Goldfinch, is remembered as a ‘box-office bomb’ that was widely panned by critics and reportedly lost tens of millions for the studio. He’s sanguine about that unpleasant experience.
“I've woken up the morning after opening films in the Toronto Film Festival to both sides of the reviewing experience,” he explains. “Once you survive both, you think, ‘Well, you're fine. Keep going, get on with it and do what you want to do’, rather than ‘I better do this, because it's expected’.”
At the very least, Crowley was delighted at the reaction to the Everyman premiere, when the hometown audience laughed in all the right places, and regular sniffles could be heard during the more-emotional scenes. Perhaps that’s the real measure of success.
- We Live In Time is in cinemas from Wednesday, January 1
Raised in Douglas, Crowley was the youngest of the four children of Mary (nee McGowan) and William (who worked with Cork’s fire service). He has two sisters, Marie and Deirdre, and a brother Bob. He is married to Fiona Weir, a casting director, and the couple have a son Billy, 13, and two adult children, Joe and Matilda, from Fiona’s previous marriage.
Primary school at St Anthony’s in Ballinlough (a few years ahead of Cillian Murphy, an actor he’d later direct in Intermission). Crowley then attended secondary school at both Rochestown, and Christian Brothers in Cork city. He went on to get a BA in English and Philosophy from UCC, as well as a master’s degree in Philosophy from the same university.
Bob Crowley, 72, is a renowned in the international theatre world for his costume and set designs, and John has long acknowledged the influence his older brother has had on him through the decades. Early trips to London to visit Bob fostered an interest in theatre, and his time at UCC helped unleash his creative side with a heavy involvement in the college’s dramatic society.
After college, Crowley moved to Dublin where his star continued to climb in the Irish theatre world, and he moved to London where he became involved in the Donmar Warehouse and later the National Theatre. His film feature debut Intermission – starring Cillian Murphy and Colin Farrell in a Mark O’Rowe screenplay – was warmly received in 2003, and Boy A (2007) brought increased international recognition. Brooklyn (2015) starred Saoirse Ronan in his most acclaimed film thus far.
Black Mirror episode ‘Beyond the Sea’ (2023); and two episodes from season two of True Detective.
Crowley has two major projects in the pipeline at the moment. One is an American psychological thriller, Five, produced by Adam McKay. He’s also working on an adaptation with Dublin-based Element Pictures of Anne Enright’s 2020 novel Actress.
