Warning: This post contains spoilers for We live in time.

We live in time ends as it begins – with one crucial difference. Eggs just collected from the coop are cracked into glass bowls on the way to breakfast. Only this time it’s not a woman named Almut cooking for her sleeping partner Tobias, but Tobias with her daughter Ella. He teaches the young student how to crack eggs on a flat surface, just as Almut, a celebrated chef, taught him at an early meeting. Another key difference: At her feet is an adorable shaggy dog. It’s a callback to a conversation the couple had about how dogs can help children heal from loss after they learned Almut’s ovarian cancer had recurred and was terminal.

It’s a poignant bookend that speaks to how we keep our loved ones with us even after they die. Almut had been very afraid that she would be forgotten or that her child would think of her as nothing more than a dead mother. The scene illustrates Tobias’ determination to show Ella that her mother had a life outside of her world.

But it is the penultimate scene that requires further analysis. And it’s one that a lot of people might be quick to break down into its component parts We live in time begins playing in theaters on October 11th: The A24 has been crying since the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September Brooklyn Director John Crowley has received mostly positive reviews. In a cinematic landscape where films aimed primarily at female audiences have scored box office victories, and with a beloved and respected leading duo in Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, it’s clear that the appetite for a tear-jerking romance has barely waned by the half Century since Ryan O’Neal held Ali MacGraw on her deathbed love story.

Read more: We live in time Demands too much from us

But unlike this iconic film We live in time does not take us to Almut’s deathbed. It treats her death metaphorically and alludes to it clearly, while her final breaths remain off-screen, leaving the flat monitors to the imagination. This is nothing new – in fact, it goes back to a long tradition of off-screen operations, particularly in romantic and family dramas. And perhaps it’s counterintuitive that this figurative approach ends up making you cry more than its more literal alternative.

In this scene, Pugh’s now quite ill Almut is in Italy for a major European cooking competition when she comes across an ice skating rink. It’s a coincidence made for the movies: Al had been a competitive skater as a teenager, until the death of her skating-loving father made it too painful to continue. After completing a recipe, she abruptly leaves the competition floor – takes off her chef’s hat as if she knows it’s the last time, because it is, walks toward her family’s stands and moves toward a glowing light, which symbolizes the impending peace. Transition to the other side – we come to her little family at the ice rink. She demonstrates her skills to novice Ella (Grace Delaney) while Tobias looks on proudly. Then we see them on the opposite side of the rink. Father and daughter wave to the mother from a distance, and she waves back and smiles blissfully. They say goodbye. There is a feeling of acceptance. Nobody sobs. The scene ends and we figuratively understand that she is dead.

One, this is the stuff of extreme cheese. I rolled my eyes, even as tears fell from them. And one more thing: We thank the Lord Almighty for sparing us from having to witness Al’s ragged final breath between hollowed cheeks and Hollywood’s best not-quite-corpse makeup – and watching their loved ones do it watch. We are even spared the immediate consequences: the coffin is lowered into the ground, the child alone in a corner while the well-wishers three heads taller chatter and sniff, the widower donating sweaters to Goodwill.

Up until this point, the film had been pretty straightforward about the pain of advanced cancer and the treatment that ravages a body to stave off death. Hair loss, nausea, exhaustion, bruising, random bloody noses, the disruption of intimacy. It’s all so terrible that Almut is considering foregoing treatment altogether so she can try to actually live for six months instead of suffering for twelve months. It’s also about the humiliations. In one scene, she watches another chemo patient fall asleep during an infusion, her red wig slipping as her head falls onto her shoulder. A nurse comes by and carefully pushes it back into place: the woman doesn’t have to be ashamed of that, the nurse knows that; Your job goes beyond the purely physical.

But We live in time stop bearing witness to death. He’s in good company with screenwriter Nick Payne’s decision to opt for metaphorical subtlety, particularly when it comes to young mothers and cancer. Every millennial pop culture enthusiast worth their salt sobbed over the end of stepmother (1998), when Susan Sarandon’s dying mother insists on taking a family photo that includes the young stepmother (Julia Roberts) she mourns over the course of the film. The two women hold hands while the Nikon lights up. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” causes the viewer to cry and smile at the same time and the photo fades to black, signifying her death, that the family moves on but she holds the memory dear. In the 1988 tear duct destroyer BeachesBarbara Hershey’s Hillary sits in an Adirondack chair in the salt air. She hugs her little daughter and then goes back to watching the yellow sun setting against a mauve sky. Her best friend CC (Bette Midler) smiles in her direction, “The Wind Beneath My Wings” stimulates the tear ducts, and someone literally rides a white horse into the sunset. Cut to black funeral limousines. With Spike Lee Crooklyn (1994), we see Alfre Woodard’s Carolyn lying weakened in a hospital bed, receiving her final goodbye kisses from daughter Troy (Zelda Harris), just before we see Troy in her pajamas, refusing to dress for the funeral.

Other films take the movie-it-or-it-didn’t-happen approach. Conditions of tenderness (1983) shows us the death of Debra Winger’s cancer-stricken but still very pretty mother of three: her hand falls limp next to her hospital bed, the camera pans to the faces of her mother (Shirley MacLaine) and her estranged husband (Jeff Daniels). . ), accepting the loss. In 2016 Other peopleMolly Shannon’s matriarch dies 49 seconds into the film – the screen is black and we can only hear the sounds of her family members huddled on the bed sobbing around her; We don’t see the moment of her death, but the millisecond afterward. Last year maestroBradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein hugs Carey Mulligan’s pale, frail, headscarf-wearing Felicia Montealegre as she flutters her eyelids and moans quietly; The camera shows the window overlooking the green lawn and the sea. Moments later, he runs onto the same lawn to hug his children in their grief.

There is no one right way to portray death on screen. Movies are about life, and death is a part of life. If you have lost a loved one to cancer or something similar, movies are either a lasting trigger or an inexpensive therapy, or both. If you can’t bring yourself to dwell on that grief without external prompting, you can consciously engage with a film that promises to demagnetize it through sheer will and impotent violins. There’s a fine line between gratuitous and tasteful, maudlin and genuine, and that line doesn’t lie in the same place for every viewer. A wet cheeks competition between Beaches And Conditions of tenderness is definitely too close to call.

But in the case of We live in timeI simultaneously felt spared from the retraumatization of reliving painful memories frame by frame, and simultaneously felt invited to access those same memories to fill in the film’s intentional gaps. One could argue that the scene lacks the poignancy of Winger, Shannon or Mulligan disappearing before our eyes; It’s a PG moment in an R-rated movie. The movie gave us sex and birth, why should we stop before death?

But for a film steeped in grief and loss, whose trailer promises to lift you up, tear you to shreds, and then drive you out of the theater, a little more indulged in the way life gives and then takes away, This portrayal of Tara Lipinski in Death’s Door ultimately works. It continues the long cornball tradition of “Did You Ever Know You’re My Hero,” with Marvin and Tammy playfully dancing on Ms. Sarandon’s grave. A reprieve without giving up any exemption. The memories blend into the everyday like eggs into pancake batter. Life goes on. It must.