Still Time explained: the ending & the movie meaning

Posted by

We are our life, right? At least, that applies if we manage to mirror what we really are in our life. But how often does that happens? How often are our values, dreams, and resolutions lost while we live on autopilot? This is what Still Time (Era Ora), the Italian movie released on Netflix in 2023, is about: the claustrophobic journey of a 40+ years old man who suddenly sees his life flying away while he works. Let’s explore the movie’s plot, meaning, and ending carefully explained.

You can watch the official trailer for Netflix’s movie Still Time here on Youtube.

Still Time: the plot, the ending, and the movie meaning, explained

Dante is like many of us. He’s 40 years old, works, tries to provide for the people he loves, and believes that his job identifies him as a man, in society and in the familiar dimension. It’s his 40th birthday, and, understandably, he’s experiencing a moment of self-awareness: the typical, intense instant when the time finally stands still, and you can draw the necessary conclusions about your life. He knows what he wants in his minute of clarity. He wants more time, so he can spend it with meaning, with presence, together with the people he loves.

From that moment, the plot of Still Time evolves surprisingly: Dante will lose every day of his life, except his birthdays, for years. Every day, he lives part of his birthday, then he turns his eyes away, and without noticing, one year has passed, and it’s again his birthday. What he did during that year is that life in autopilot we mentioned earlier: a life that doesn’t represent his core values; still, an existence that proceeds steadily, with the impression that every effort to change direction is useless.

In his moment of self-awareness, Dante knows what he wants: to be a good husband and father and spend valuable time with his family. He wants to work less, and that’s why he wants to quit his job. Because in those moments, we know what really matters: love, connections, and people. We are not our job, right?

However, Dante’s problem is that his positive resolutions and rational analysis last only one day. The day after, while we don’t see it, he starts his routine. Like all of us, after all. What the movie Still Time has explained through Dante’s “time travels” is that every day we live without that awareness, without aligning what we do with what we really are, is a day that has passed out of our control. It’s a lost day. And if you focus all your efforts on repeating your routines day after day, the lost days become months, then years. You change, you become someone different, and you don’t notice.

As long as the movie plot progresses, we may feel that it will end badly for Dante. But it’s actually a happy ending, the one through which Still Time has explained the key to a change in our life: in Dante’s case, the job was the dimension in which his time (and his identity) got lost, so he just did what he needed to do years ago: reduce – drastically! – the space job was taking in his life, taking the 96 days of vacation he collected over years of workaholic life. 

Surprisingly it works. After doing that, time is magically back to normal. Dante is finally living “tomorrow,” meaning that the loop where he was stuck, forced to live only his birthdays, is finally broken. What happened in the meanwhile? He lost the harmony of the family, separated from his wife Alice, lost his daughter’s childhood, and hurt many people. But the meaning Still Time wanted to send us at the ending is clear: there’s still time, and people can change. “Era Ora,” the original Italian title, can be translated into English with “it was about time.”

Is it true? The answer is inside you. Because you are Dante, and if you want your change to happen, it’s on you to start living in the present. Do it today, and prove that the movie is right.

Discover other movies and TV shows explained on Auralcrave