Brother can you spare some time?

What is the endgame? In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, finally gives us an answer. And that answer is terrifying. Setting aside many of the complaints about wooden acting, plot holes, and lack of chemistry between the main characters found on Imdb user reviews, In Time is a dystopian nightmare masquerading as a modern Bonnie and Clyde or Robin Hood. This film really demonstrates how technology and advances of it can be made to serve the elite and harm the masses. If there is an ideal world the masters of the universe could dream up, the world of In Time would be it.


Very briefly, unexplained advances in genetic engineering have rendered the human species dependent on a "body clock." Everyone stops aging at 25 but then live only one more year, as their clock ticks down. Suspend disbelief for the creative ways this plot device is exploited. Time is now the only currency, it runs continuously but can be earned and spent as wages and prices. Sounds wonderful right? Everyone looks great, money finally has inherent value, and... everyone has the chance to be immortal. Timberlake's character Will even says during the introductory monologue that the rich live forever and the poor just try to make it through the day. What happens when your clock runs down to zero? You die, no ifs, ands, or buts. No ceremony, no chance to say goodbye. Just like turning off a switch. Oh, time can be loaned at interest and everyone is segregated into "time zones," each with their own standard of living and rules. Law enforcement officers called "timekeepers" ensure that the people in the ghetto stay in the ghetto and pay their loans.

This is, quite simply, the most perfect form of social control and enforced hierarchy ever imagined. Several characters even point out that "for a few to be immortal, many must die." The timekeeper played by Cillian Murphy even laughs at the idea of "justice," explaining that his role in the world is simply to maintain stability. In the ghetto prices, taxes, and interest go always go up; wages can be cut, and all without any notice. It seems arbitrary until the "needs" of the extremely rich in "New Greenwich" are understood. The children of the rich, just like their parents, must be ensured immortality. The only way is to squeeze the denizens of the ghetto ever harder, keep the hamsters running in their wheels ever faster. A recipe for rebellion if there ever was one, except that even sitting still to contemplate this means death. The ghetto-dwellers are constantly kept hours from death. As is also often noted in the film, the poor don't do anything slowly.

It would have been interesting to have some back story, however small, to see how the hamsters were sold on this idea. If human nature has any constants, however, the short-term thinking or lack thereof for short term gain is compelling for the masses. If this sounds elitist, well try and explain capitalist economics to the average working-class republican. Some scientists in service to bankers probably dangled the prospect of being "forever" young in front of people scared to death of aging, and that would be all it would take. Even in an ostensible democracy.

Setting aside the flaws noted above, the treatment of human nature is the real gem of the film. The infinite variety of human nature on display for viewers. There is Will the freedom fighter, taking the mantle of his father to seek justice. Fortis the ghetto gangster who preys on his fellows. Borel the ghetto denizen who drinks himself to death when Will shares time with him, leaving his wife and baby stuck (she was already desperate, remarking how much they could use the baby's year now). Henry Hamilton the disillusioned elite who turns on the members of his class because he tires of immortality. Sylvia the elite rebel, forever tempted by the "other side." Her father Phillipe, the embodiment of power and privilege, addicted to greed and exploitation. And of course, Raymond Leon, the true believer and timekeeper in dedicated service to power who never questions his place in the order of things.

So how does this film compare with other dystopian stories? Somewhere between 1984 and Logan's Run. Perhaps as a thought experiment and method of capitalist social control like Brave New World. Coincidentally, Huxley was accused by critics of a weak plot and wooden characters as well, the story simply being a vehicle to explore the world he created, just as In Time has been. But as all of these films use propaganda in ways to control the masses, In Time is more realistic in some ways. When you simply have to keep working just to stay alive and have no time to reflect, there is no need for propaganda to control the proles or Epsilon semi-morons. But, just as sophisticated propaganda driven my technological advances start one way and end up being used for social control and profit-making, this film shows what technology in the hands of the children of darkness can do when taken to a logical conclusion. Imagination is the province of the children of light, showing the way to greater avenues of control, power, and privilege for the children of darkness.