first of all, We Live In Time is possibly not only the saddest movie of the year, but might actually be the saddest movie i have ever seen in my LIFE.

SERIOUSLY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

YOU SHOULD SEE IT.

IT WAS SO GOOD.

i'll keep away from spoilers (this isn't a movie review, but if it was, five stars), but for context:

• Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh fall in love.

• and... that's it.

that's really all you need to know.

well.... AND that i started crying in the third scene, and not a MOMENT earlier.

humans are uniquely story driven creatures.

we have a real knack for it.

we see where something's going and we put the pieces together REALLY well — it's maybe the only thing that i actually think every person on the planet might be able to do pretty decently.

for instance, you can probably intuitively sense that this is accurate:

• we call it "comedy" when a story doesn't play out how we thought it would.

• we call it "tragedy" when the story plays out how we feared it might.

• and we call it "a secret third thing" when you haven't thought of one yet but you need some asymmetry.

if someone is telling you a story and you can't immediately sort it into the "comedy" or "tragedy" buckets, then the person telling the story is either a) uniquely awful at it, or b) reeeeaally nervous about breaking some bad news.

and, sure, i'm not saying that everyone instinctively knows everything, but i really do believe we can aaaaalways tell where a story's headed.

name ONE thing.

i think about this video a lot:

John Green is this modern day master author poet of SO many sad books that have been made into SO many sad movies and he's COMPLETELY on-brand here in being GRATUITOUSLY verbose about an EXTREMELY casual question, but... he's got a good point actually.

throughout history, i think the word "hope" has had a rough go of it.

sure, hope is still this, like, angelic figure in the common imagination, but there are a good handful of philosophers that have been like "hope is an illusion, and not a harmless one, and also you should be GLAD for the bad things that happen to you, bitch."

which, like... okay.

point taken.

but we still seem to hope anyway, and we always have, and when you have NO hope... you die.

editor's note: i should probably unpack that a little more 'cause that's kind of a big thing to say and maybe there's both literal and metaphorical extrapolations of that statement which could both be valid or maybe not but this piece is actually on a deadline, sooooo... no. sorry.

and John Green has written about all TYPES of "no hope" kinds of people.

and because of that, i'm sure he's also talked to a lot of "no hope" kinds of people.

and yet his one thing is:

the ineradicability of hope despite the futility of effort.

which is so uncomfortably specific that i think he might actually be serious.

and... i'm inclined to agree.

rocks is two things.

Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh fall in love.

i said that's aaaall you need to know.

and it is!

because, there's nothing all that extraordinary about what happens in We Live in Time — sure, she's an incredible [REDACTED] and he's a soddy ol' [REDACTED], and they play off that schtick for a while — but this movie only needed three scenes to tell me exactly what was going to happen.

which was... two people were going to fall in love.

despite eeeeeeeverything being futile.

which was... too real for me.

so i cried.

the ENTIRE time.

and i rooted for them!

and i was INSPIRED by them!

and when the end came — the one i had seen coming from the beginning — i actually welcomed it, and then i hobbled out on my crutches with a renewed sense of hope of my own!

WE CAN'T EVEN HELP IT.

hope is the story we are trying to write ourselves.

and even when we've already given the end away in the opening scenes, we keep writing it, 'cause story is in our blood! it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to let go of!

we KNOOOW it's gonna play out differently.

we KNOOOW it's gonna suck.

but we hope anyway!

and we pull more hope from stories about having NO hope and we somehow find that to be BEAUTIFUL instead of absolutely OBLITERATING!

i think that's CRAZY!

HOW DO I END THIS?

oh right, the deadline.

once again, i find myself wishing i'd spent the entire week writing this piece instead of squeezing it all in at the end.

i would've used SO many more video clips.

the point is something about how humans are hardwired for narrative!

or maybe about the indomitable human spirit!

or about how good We Live in Time was!

i'm not sure now!

i just wanted to use the "rocks" clip!