In Time is another inventive vision of the future by writer/director Andrew Niccol. In 1997 Niccol delivered the intriguing Gattaca, an icy depiction of a society whose population is predetermined entirely by eugenics. While In Time matches the cool tone of the earlier film, its premise is too heavy-handed to be as thought-provoking. As a political and sociological allegory, this movie was seemingly designed with the Occupy movement in mind. Niccol attempts to explore class distinctions in a meaningful way, but his reach unfortunately exceeds his grasp by a long ways. As with Gattaca, our society’s obsession with physical perfection is a running theme. The world of In Time is populated by people who have been genetically engineered to stop physically aging at twenty-five. The catch? Once they hit that age, they only have one year to live unless they can acquire more time.
The concept “time is money” is quite literal in In Time. Everyone has a green LED clock implanted in their arm that counts down how much time they have left to live. Time, whether one minute or a century, is spent and earned exactly like money. Put in eight hours at work and get some time added to the clock. Before doing a favor for someone, negotiate how much time they will transfer from their own clock as payment. Transients beg for spare minutes rather than pocket change. When a person’s clock runs down to zero, that person is dead. As long as a person continues to acquire time, their life goes on indefinitely. A person rich in time will live forever. The poor live day to day, hour to hour, even minute to minute.
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This set-up presents some interesting concepts. Most notable is the unsettling reality that every adult, whether twenty-five or one hundred years old, appears to be the exact same age. It’s a bizarre world in which an elderly man’s mother looks as youthful as his daughter. The wealthy live in a different time zone than the poor, with several time zones in between to fill out the class structure. Passage through a given zone requires a toll in the form of time. In order to transfer time, a person holds their LED clock under a scanner and minutes are deducted. These time zones are not fully explained and end up being a rather confusing element. People can also transfer time to one another effortlessly by touching their forearm clocks, which begs the question of why there aren’t more rampant muggings in the streets.
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