Everyone in the office should watch About Time

About Time2013Romance / Comedy2h 3m

Here is my proposal for our unusually quiet office: one evening, put the work away, ignore WhatsApp for two hours and three minutes, and watch About Time.

There may be ten or eleven of us on the staff list, but the office often feels as if the chairs report to work more reliably than the people. Then a few familiar faces arrive, somebody sits down for breakfast, and the room becomes an entirely different place.

This is not because it is the cleverest time-travel film ever made. It is not. The rules are suspiciously convenient, the science has taken annual leave, and anyone arriving for a complicated multiverse may feel they entered the wrong screening.

Watch it because it understands something much more useful: an ordinary day can be a very good day while it is happening — and we usually notice too late.

It is romantic, but that is not the main reason

There is a love story, and it is funny, warm and pleasingly imperfect. But the film keeps widening its view. It becomes about parents getting older, siblings making bad decisions, friends being irritating, workdays being workdays, and the strange speed with which a family becomes a collection of memories.

In other words, it is about the material most of our lives are actually made of.

No superheroes. No world to save. Just dinner, rain, a difficult commute, an embarrassing conversation and the people you would miss if they were suddenly not there.

The time-travel trick is really a workday trick

The film asks you to imagine living a day twice. The first time, you are late, annoyed, distracted and mentally drafting a reply to someone who has annoyed you. The second time, nothing important changes — except you pay attention.

Try the tiny experiment below. Build a completely ordinary office day, then see what happens when you give it your attention rather than asking it to be extraordinary.

That is the film’s best idea. You do not need a spectacular life. You need to be present for the life that is already occurring.

It may make the office slightly nicer on Sunday

About Time quietly attacks the fantasy that happiness begins after the next deadline: after the promotion, after the move, after the wedding, after the children are less exhausting, after the office becomes busy enough to justify all those empty chairs.

That final one may require actual time travel — or breakfast.

But the rest is familiar. We can spend a week treating every hour as an obstacle between us and Friday, then wonder why the months disappear. The film does not tell you to abandon ambition. It suggests that your ambitions should not eat all the days they were meant to improve.

It will make you think of your family

This is the reason the film stays with people. Beneath the jokes and romance is a tender story about the limited amount of time we get with our parents and the people who raised us.

In the Maldives, family and friends can still be scattered between islands, Malé, Hulhumalé and countries abroad. That lands especially hard. A call postponed because we are busy does not feel dramatic. Usually it is not. But a life is largely made from those very small decisions: call now or later, sit for tea or rush away, listen properly or glance at the phone.

The film does not make this point with a lecture. It lets you discover it, and then unfairly hands you tissues.

Watch it with someone you love. Or watch it alone and immediately message someone you love. Both are valid viewing arrangements.

Your two-hour investment

You will get a film that is:

• funny without being loud;
• emotional without constantly demanding that you cry;
• romantic without pretending romance solves everything;
• fantastical, but interested in ordinary life; and
• likely to improve tomorrow more than another night of scrolling.

It is not flawless. A few characters are thinner than they deserve to be, its time-travel logic should not be examined under office fluorescent lighting, and its view of life is deliberately soft. But warmth is not the same as shallowness. Sometimes a gentle film can say something a louder one cannot.

The office challenge

Watch About Time before our next breakfast. Then come to the table ready to say which ordinary moment in the film stayed with you. The best part of a quiet morning is usually five familiar faces and the good tales that arrive with breakfast.

For one day after watching, act as if you have already lived that day once. Notice the first cup of tea. Be kind to the person who is moving too slowly. Glance out of the window. Call home.

You do not need to become a new person. You only need to be awake for the person you already are.

Deadline: the next breakfast. Recommended setting: after work, phone face-down, tissues within diplomatic reach.