Review of In Time (2011) by Clarisesamuels — 05 Feb 2012

As a left-wing liberal with socialist leanings, I can't help but have a strong affinity to this film. So rarely does Hollywood stop endorsing the status quo and try to use its power to challenge the system and demand change.

This movie isn't perfect but it is heroic, and if it has failed, then it's a noble failure. This is a sci-fi thriller, a dystopia apparently set in a futuristic time but more likely set on another planet that is an Earth look-alike.

That would clarify why there is no explanation for how this system came into being, for it appears to have always been so--a planetary system for indentured servitude, which instead of being based on money, is based on time.

You can save time, waste time, spend time, but mostly you live on borrowed time, literally, because you are guaranteed 25 years, and then you stop aging and you are granted one full year on your biological clock that ticks away on your arm.

If you were not born into a rich family, which would allow you to live hundreds of years or more, you live below the poverty line, working long hours under poor conditions to earn more time. Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried are a very effective sci-fi Bonnie and Clyde, challenging the system and attempting to overthrow it single-handedly to wipe out the huge disparity between the lives of the rich and the lives of the poor.

Timberlake's character, Will Salas, a poor wretch from the ghetto whose own father died trying to challenge the system, never has more than one day at a time on his clock, but he is suddenly granted a hundred years of time by a rich centenarian who is tired of living forever.

But the suicidal millionaire gives Salas something more--he tells Salas the truth about the prevailing ideology: "There's enough time for everyone." That information stuns Salas, and he realizes that everyone is buying into this reality unquestioningly, when they should be rioting in the streets and overthrowing the system.

The poor think this is the way things have to be, the rich are protecting themselves and their lifestyles, and in between is a kind of petite bourgeoisie, who are neither rich nor poor, but survive nicely by working with the system.

The film explicates the horrors of capitalism, somewhat simplified but still convincing, and there is a secondary theme concerning the cult of youth. On this planet, no one ages after 25 years, so it is hard to tell the difference between mother, daughter, and grandmother.

The lifestyles of the very rich and eternally youthful are lavish and completely self-centered, with the only justice being their eternal boredom, their spiritual emptiness, and their complete lack of usefulness.

The slogan of the rich is, "For a few people to be immortal, many must die." And the response of Timberlake's character is the response of the revolutionary, "No one can be immortal if even one person has to die.

" So when Hollywood wakes up and starts filming these themes, you know something must be brewing, because the rich producers and directors of southern California are not overly famous for their anarchism and their revolutionary fervor.