This post is about the 2011 film “In Time.”
But first, here’s my take
on the state of the movie business.
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At the macro level, “Hollywood” has suffered for two
reasons: a) intellectual property theft (led largely by the Chinese) and b) the
“lowest common denominator” effect.
By destroying props, injuring at least one character and
frenetic-paced montage sequences, modern productions intend to traumatize their
audience into submission; ultimately seeking to "condition the unconscious" through symbolism (see Carl Jung) Even patrons
with low scoring intelligence quotients can follow along. Hence, the denominator effect.
It is via this post-“shock” acceptance, that the audience can be rehabilitated by our "developed" economy's inculcated, MPAA censorship-approved lessons.
“Green lit” productions from the “left” imbue their captives
with evolving lessons about expected and permissible social mores, or at least
fantasies as to what is crossing a line should be versus what bending it is is.
Film theorists explain the history behind this, but the
concise form is that film has always been used an economic and political “propagandized”
connection. All the world leaders since
the industrial world occurred have so framed their constituencies in this
fashion.
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For those who haven't seen this film, wiki’s synopsis reads fair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time_(film).
The key issue involves the notion of time consumption. In this science fiction world, the material
categories of raison d’etre are
assumed: shelter, sustenance and basic safety. Thus, there is “no need” for currency, as we
know it to be in a capitalist world - as in one US dollar.
Currency, economically, means denominated
consideration. Currency is not
inherently an asset, it’s a governmentally regulated means of benefit and
detriment, from which the body politic creates relations to one another via state
rules.
Will Salas, the effeminately played protagonist played by
Justin Timberlake, makes, ironically, time-denominating, or regulating, machines. It is ironic because he has so little time
left in his life, only about two days from the movie’s commencement. Thus, he was given three years of life as he is age 28.
The movie accurately explains human’s biology, the body no
longer “matures”, but begins to degrade, at about the age of 25. The characters are reminded of this by a
thirteen digit time display embedded in each person’s forearm.
The working assumption is that the world’s populace can
hypothetically live into eternity because of a scientific, genetic discovery.
Will’s plight is typical of most “little guy” characters,
his origins derive from an industrialist city where his opportunities for
financial discretion and advancement is unfortunately predestined.
He works in a factory so that he can earn more time, which
is exchanged for things like rent or coffee.
But the governmental authorities, called “time keepers”, as well as all
merchants, exclusively deal with the “inner-city” patrons from behind barriers
(such as one encounters in most banks).
So it is with barriers or numbered zones, by which this
dystopic city of Dayton (shot largely in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and
Pasadena) both confines and constricts its time-deprived subject from more
desirable locations like New Greenwich.
Without startle, Will, whose name has a noted Nietzschean
connection, shall inevitably escape and travel outside the impoverish Zone 12
from which he derives.
He achieves this by a gratuitous gift from an existential, Solomaic
immortal-like male suit in a bar named Hamilton. Immortal because Hamilton has nearly a
100 years of life on his displayed clock.
Wise, yet nihilistic, because Hamilton wastefully lacks any appreciation of his good
fortune so many prize. Will saves this
well dressed and coifed gentleman from some local criminals who take substantial
steps in attempt to thieve [sic], and thus kill, him.
In return, the suicide desiring Hamilton surreptitiously gifts Will his years upon their reaching a terminal shelter from the crime scene.
With all this newly found time, Will can purchase services
and goods that lead to his journey into New Greenwich (shot at the Avenue of
the Stars – Beverly Hills).
Not unlike
the US Dollar’s color, green, this class based setting is a highly sought after
location (shot in Irvine and Beverly Hills).
Will’s successful gambling places him in a better creditor
status, but he is concurrently pursued by the investigating time keepers.
Will accepts a redux gambling opportunity from his previously
defeated competitor, a majorly trademark named-branded time seller (representing a
banker-type), named Phillipe.
But Will's seemingly pre-destined fate of economic cog is scoured after by the politce state agents - the Time Keepers.
In the process of Will’s seeking time, he must now protect his attainment of it. Contingencies of
survival become more crucial, with time "on his side." Genetically, he was not so entitled, but the carrot of possibility in economic progression and advancement is dangled, for him, and thus the audience, to be worthy bate.
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The forgoing analysis of the base facts present the most consequential
question. It is, whether American’s, or
citizen’s of developed and emerging economies, accept the material apparatus from
which valuations are attached and class relations are constructed.
In the battle of ideas, In Time poses a plain dillemma to
its English speaking audience, will you accept the time allocated to your young, “generation alphabet” life?
In a Hegelian fashion, a centralized state is contrasted with
a free market, propertied one.
On the one hand, the Marxist and Leninist articulated
writings are relied on to juxtapose need from want. On the other, wanting more
time, alone, can be achieved by mere association with “propertied circle’s,
who, paradoxically, create it (value, or time).
The very concept of nation-state identity, or Social
Contract (as Rouseau wrote of), is questioned in the film when Will replies to
the initial intake investigation by the Chief Time Keeper: “It’s not illegal to
travel.”
One of the many Francophile
founders, Alexander Hamilton, is thought of by the above said “immortal” who
gifts Will the bountiful time to life.
Hamilton was also one of the founders of our Constitution and first Secretary
of Treasury.
Once again, a post-industrialized, post-rust belt, post “manufacturing”
America is called into question. There are leading questions, with one unifying theme: will it last?
Can “the western” world of production and entitlements
survive?
Is the year really 2011?
Perhaps it is the year 5772 or 4709 as Hebrew or Chinese
calendar’s might say.
The “seven” time categories (second, minute, hour, day, week,
month and year) are denominated in 13 digit arrangements (following the
Astrological, or Helenic, calendar, in contrast to the Augustan twelve hour and
month cycles).
The most seemingly trivial satire was the number of years
Will, with the aid of his new love interest Silivia (played by the lovely
Amanda Seyfried), eventually burglar (lawfully[?] by public necessity) from her
father Phillipe (above mentioned banker).
It is a million years.
Why a million?
Perhaps a reference to being a “millionaire,” it was
confounding, I found it undeveloped.
Perhaps Phillipe’s statement: “We can always create more”,
shines some light on the notion that the undergirding assumption of evolution,
that science can study and propound further development of whatever valuable
material is necessary to our interconnected world, is (hu)man made.
In this sense, social engineering has been reduced to a
science, a premise without objection, from which no Supreme Being is recalled,
let alone mentioned.
Will is thus left free, within time, to remove the economic institution that
is “cost of living.”
Indeed, this is what he and Silvia do, by spreading the one-million
year time credit machine taken from Phillipe’s vault, they gift it to the time
expiring pedestrians in front of the neon-colored charity doing business as “The
Mission.”
In the 21st century, one questions how many in the audience would appreciate the The Scope Trial: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/statcase.htm
In it, Tennessee sought to criminalize any public school's cirricula that explained man's origins with an evolutionary premise.
Nearly one-hundred years later, the reverse is true, any form of "spiritual" acceptance is banned from implied, generally accepted opinion.
In reference to my earlier thoughts on the state of Hollywood, I contend "In Time" proved a bona fide production, and return to, an "adult movie" (in the 20th century sense of the phrase).
