In Time (PG-13)
27/01/14 21:12 Filed in: 2011
Starring: Justin Timberlake
October 2011
TAKING AIM:
In Time, the trippy techno-thriller from director Andrew Niccol, features futuristic twists on ripped-from-headlines issues like the global recession and the evaporation of the middle class. The film features an intriguing “what if” scenario which taps into universal anxieties, such as growing old and living in the moment amid increasing socio-economic uncertainties. Oh, and don’t look now, but Justin Timberlake is the male lead. Yep, you heard right…Timberlake has earned leading man cred, but should he abandon his day job…er other job, just yet?
TARGET PRACTICE:
In a World…: Where time is the currency, many must die so that a few might have immortality. But we weren’t meant to live forever, as Amanda Seyfried’s affluent Sylvia Weis asserts in a tone so earnest that we almost miss the line’s stilted edge. The movie’s premise, which feels like yet another Philip K. Dick adaptation, is harrowingly cautionary yet easily digestible…we learn the rules of the game quickly. Unfortunately, the metaphor of time as currency looses its novelty after the first hour, just about the time meaningful dialogue or character moments are replaced by shootouts and car chases.
An Investment in Time: Let’s face it, movies are an investment in time (and let’s not forget money…as if we could with today’s exorbitant ticket costs). For poor films we often hear people say “I wish I could get those two hours of my life back.” While the employment of such a line is oh so tempting for a film like In Time, I honestly don’t feel like it would be a fair assessment of the film’s high concept premise, however heavy-handed and unwieldy it becomes by the end.
Borrowed Plots: In the film’s mildly-dystopian future, individuals running out of time must beg, borrow or steal time in order to survive. In a similar practice, Niccol (who serves as writer and director) has liberally lifted story elements from other literary or cinematic sources. Aside from time bandits being called minutemen, the most obvious antecedent here is Aldous Huxley’s eerily prescient 1932 novel Brave New World. In Huxley’s near-future society, individuals are assigned to castes based on genetically engineered abilities or proclivities. Here, the class system is purely based on time: those who have it and those who don’t, those who use it wisely and those who waste it. The movie depicts time zones, which clearly demarcate those who have very little time left in their life, those who have an adequate amount of time left and those who are “time rich.” Another literary touchstone is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (1862). Cillian Murphy plays a futuristic cop (dubbed “time keeper”) hell-bent on apprehending the movie’s stars and exhibits more than just a few of the characteristics inherent in the intractable Inspector Javert. As heavily pursued fugitives, Seyfried and Timberlake are a type of Bonnie and Clyde, but these two actors are a far cry from the superlative Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who played Bonnie and Clyde in the landmark 1967 film of the same name. A more obscure source of inspiration for the film can be traced to Nickelback’s 2007 music video for their song “Savin’ Me.” In the video, the balance of a person’s lifespan appears overhead and the main character in the video saves people from falling pianos, etc. He knows a person’s life is about to expire when he sees that their life counter is nearly depleted. A virtually identical system is employed in this film as characters can glance at the inside of their forearm to get an up-to-the-second balance of their life account.
Stepford Society: Early in the film we learn that the near-future humans are genetically engineered to stop aging at twenty-five. Most people would view that arrangement as ideal and highly desirable. On the downside, however, such altered individuals only live to age twenty-six. This plot element is obviously another thinly veiled attempt at making social commentary; this time the eternal quest to look and stay young is called into question. I suppose Botox and nip/tuck will eventually give way to genetic alterations on a grand scale, but why do members of the film’s futuristic society die at twenty-six (barring a risky venture to obtain more time)? Could it be that the plot needed an artificial deadline in order to produce urgency…especially when characters see the last few precious seconds of their life ticking away? And who says twenty-five is the ideal age? Isn’t that a bit, well…ageist? Ultimately, a world where Olivia Wilde is your mother and Amanda Seyfried is your girlfriend may seem perfect, at least on the surface, but isn’t it just a little creepy—much like the enhanced women in The Stepford Wives (1975, 2004), which serves as yet another filmic precursor to this movie?
The Need to Fix Things: In TVs Lost, Dr. Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox) has the co-dependent compulsion to fix everyone and everything around him. Screenwriters, especially those who write sci-fi films it seems, have the same need to reconcile societal dysfunctions or imbalances by movie’s end. A recent example of this is Bruce Willis’ Surrogates (2009), which features a society where humans live out their lives through android surrogates (again, it’s a cosmetically perfect society since androids never age). The moral dilemma of whether or not to preserve such a perfect, yet shallow, culture falls to Willis, who makes the fateful choice to reset society to its original, flawed status. Here, the inference is that the two leads have determined to change the corrupted system when they resolutely march up the steps of a government building in the movie’s final scene (as if changing nationwide policies could be that simple.) The movie seems to imply that a coup will set everything right…a frightening notion for our current society, despite its pervasive governmental corruption and economic turmoil. So why do writers/producers feel the need to resolve these cautionary tales with touchy-feely endings? Do they think it will result in more butts in seats? Didn’t work out too well for Surrogates, did it? I assure you, a film can be just as compelling by depicting some dark dystopia, plopping some characters into the middle of the mess and allowing them wrestle with the exigencies of life in such a disparate landscape…and then leave them there. Ridley Scott did it successfully in a little film called Blade Runner (1982). Seems to me it’s been pretty well-received over the years. Note to Hollywood: “You don’t have to fix everything.”
PARTING SHOTS:
Tough thought-provoking, the movie’s extended metaphor is overdetermined, especially in the opulent time zone (do the “time rich” dole out their precious time to “time poor” charities?). The movie comes close to making poignant commentary, like the dangers of wasting time for example, but the message fails to penetrate the barrier of contrived story devices and heavy-handed homilies on societal ills. When the premise starts to wear thin, Niccol defaults to a series of action sequences to move the film toward its inevitable, predictable conclusion, since he really has nothing else to fall back on. In Time is a big disappointment because it had something to say but got in its own way. It’s a shame, but in the end the movie prevented itself from having any lasting impact. Only you can determine whether or not the film is worth your time, but for my money it’s only worth about two dollars of yours.
Rating: 2 1/2