In Time

There are indeed recurring patterns in the films of writer/director Andrew Niccol. To have a glimpse of his genius, let's look into Niccol’s 2011 dystopian sci-fi action movie, In Time.

Some of Niccol’s movies known for their dystopian features are Gattaca and S1m0ne. His recent work, In Time, shares a yarn with Gattaca through its obvious division in the social class. In Gattaca, when someone is born with the superior genetically-engineered gene, he becomes part of the master race; while, those who are born with disabilities are deprived of any privilege to live a better life. In Time’s concept is closer to Gattaca in a sense that it resurrects the conflict between the master and the slave, the rich and the poor.

In Time tells the story of how Will Salas (Justin Timberlake), a guy from the ghetto, was gifted a century’s worth of time by Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer), a 105-year-old elite from New Greenwich. In Time was set in a universe where the one percent (of the population, meaning the upper class) owns the 99 percent of the world’s time. Meanwhile, the 99 percent or the rest of the public literally live second to second— 1 versus 99. Yes, it’s very much like Occupy Wall Street.

When Will’s mother Rachel (Olivia Wilde) timed out due to the unexpected fare hike, Will decided to go to New Greenwich to change things, to exact revenge, and to right the wrong. In the movie, when a person reaches the age of 25, he stops aging (just like in Hollywood) but the bad part is, he is only given a year, projected in the glow-in-the-dark timer in his forearm, to live. These numbers are a countdown and somehow resemble the marked digits of the victims in the Holocaust. When somebody times out, he or she just drops dead anywhere in the ghetto which again echoes how the Jews died in the concentration camp during the Nazi period.

In the film, time is the currency— proving true the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Time is money.” It also gives new currency to Karl Marx’s idea that “moments are the elements of profit” and Henry David Thoreau’s opinion that “the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” In Time is a world of struggle and pain, knowing that most of them cannot have enough time to savor the moments; and their lives only depend on how much time they can earn, beg, borrow, or steal.

If we view In Time as a text for structuralist activity, we can relate the framework of its consequent events to a larger and universal model of narrative structure. The recurring patterns can be regarded by looking at the intertextual connections. By using structuralism, we can readily detect how the story would flow, or end.

In the movie, Will kidnaps Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried), daughter of a wealthy businessman in New Greenwich, a place where the rich don’t run because they’ve got much time in store. But Sylvia fell in love with Will transforming her from being a kidnap victim into a dependable accomplice— robbing banks and giving time to the poor citizens of the ghetto. Now we see a Bonnie & Clyde – Robinhood hybrid.

Bonnie and Clyde were famous outlaws, notorious for robbery in America during the Great Depression. In the film version of the couple’s lives, their first meeting was portrayed as adventure-at-first-sight. When Clyde tried to steal the car of Bonnie’s mother, Bonnie decided to run with him as a partner in crime because she is fed up with her life as a waitress. Meanwhile, Robinhood, as all we all know, steals from the royal palace then gives his loot to the poor. This morphed Bonnie & Cylde – Robinhood destiny reflects the same structure or narrative flow of events for the Will & Sylvia goodwill scheme.

In Time is a metaphor for the widening gap between the rich and poor. In structuralist view, we live in a world where we think in binary, where we deal with binary opposition.  The movie pictures a world (a lesser version of ours) where there is extreme capitalism and class struggle.

In the course of In Time’s release in 2011, science fiction writer Harlan Ellison filed a lawsuit against the makers of the movie due to plagiarism. He claimed that In Time was based from his own short story Repent, Harlequin! said the Ticktockman.  Ellison said that In Time appears to have a similar plot with his dystopian short story. Repent Harlequin!, written in 1965, tells the story of a man chased by the Ticktockman (in the movie, it’s the Timekeeper) for allegedly breaking the rules. After watching the film though, Ellison just dropped the case voluntarily giving no further comments.

Back to the film, the obsessed hunt by the Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) reminds me of Javert in his quest to finding Jean Valjean. In Time has the same structure as Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables in terms of the manhunt obsession. In both texts, we see a law officer moving heaven and earth just to catch an innocent man accused of being an outlaw. By un-structuring the model, we can now learn how this will end. Same goes to local television series where you just change the names and locations of the characters, but the twists and conclusion are the all the same.

These multiple texts inside In Time might have different backgrounds but what is amazing about structuralism is when we try to un-structure the whole framework, we find that these texts are unified in a coherent system similar to our own way of thinking and living.

In a world where time is money (just like in the movie Waterworld where plants, paper, and soil are the currencies), people are forced to move at a pace beyond normal. In our time now, people "kill" themselves to earn more money (or time) but ironically, they lose quality time with their significant others. The things we own eventually own us.


*I do not own the photos used in this blog. No intention of copyright infringement.