John Crowley is good with actors and less dependable with the stories around them. We value the directness of Brooklyn and the performances in We Live in Time, though its shuffled chronology does little for a thin romance.
Fi1m perspective
In We Live in Time (2024), John Crowley puts a hospital consultation beside a first kiss. Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield play Almut and Tobias, whose romance arrives in pieces that we must assemble ourselves. For minutes at a time, their performances make us forget how ordinary the story around them is. Crowley gets us interested in these people, then seems oddly reluctant to let us simply spend time with them.
His feature debut, Intermission (2003), was an Irish ensemble comedy-drama; Boy A (2007) brought him wider attention. The adaptations Brooklyn (2015) and The Goldfinch (2019) took on novels by Colm Tóibín and Donna Tartt respectively. Across his work, the recurring interest is in ordinary people facing loss or change, with humour allowed into the drama. Crowley works closely with actors to make feelings believable and shifts of tone convincing, which helps explain why the people can stay interesting even when the storytelling falters.
Brooklyn is the useful comparison because it tells a plain story in order and trusts it. Crowley’s interest in jumping between timelines is influenced by Nicolas Roeg, but We Live in Time gives us little reason to share his enthusiasm. Nick Payne’s screenplay supplies the shuffled years; Crowley does not make their ordering reveal much more about the couple. We felt handled by the placement of that consultation beside that kiss: the contrast prompts emotion without telling us much about these two people.
We are happy to work out a chronology when doing so changes how we understand a conversation or a choice. Here, too often, we only work out the chronology. It would be unfair to treat Pugh and Garfield’s performances as something that happened despite their director, but they cannot make this thin story substantial. We would like Crowley to put more faith in his work with actors and give them a story that needs less rearranging. Start with Brooklyn.
Biography
John Crowley (born 19 August 1969) is an Irish theatre and film director. He was born in Cork and studied English and philosophy at University College Cork before beginning to direct plays in Dublin in the early 1990s. He later worked in London's West End and became an associate director at the Donmar Warehouse.
Crowley made his feature debut with the comedy-drama Intermission (2003), for which he won an Irish Film and Television Award for Best Director. His other films include Boy A (2007), Brooklyn (2015) and We Live in Time (2024). He has also directed episodes of True Detective (2015) and Black Mirror (2023). He is the brother of theatre designer Bob Crowley.
