In Time

Yesterday I also watched a new film on the Sky Channel called In Time which also featured a Brave New World. The concept is an interesting one although the film is flawed in fundamentally ways. Genetic engineering and micro technology has developed humans into being able to stop the aging process at the age of 25 ensuring that before this the body is able to develop without difficulty subject to having an implant with kicks in at 25. From that point life is governed by time with time being the system for payments and purchasing and all digitalised. Time can be transferred in a number of ways between human directly hand and arm to hand an arm and by time bank machines or electronically. Society is divided into time zones with at he least end a ghetto area where everyone functions on a day by day basis but where the payment for world and the price of goods and services is controlled to ensure that the population remains at the appropriate level to enable the continuation of those who inhabit other time zones although why this is so is never explained, or how the economy works in general or what happens in the interim time zones between the ghetto and the New Greenwich which is where the most prosperous and influential live.

In addition to the being controlled on a day by day basis where the authorities raise the price of cup of coffee from 3 to 4 minutes and where the mother of the main male character having given her son 30 mins of her time so he can have a proper meal at lunchtime finds that the cost of transport where she has been to where she where she is to meet her son has been raised from one hour to two and she only has an hour and a half of time left and she expires before he can meet her having found that she is not the transport.

Before then the main male character has saved someone from New Greenwich who has lived for 100 years and has grown weary of his life and has come to area knowing his life will end as there are those who will steal his time. When he is rescued against his wishes by the main character, Will played by Justin Timberlake. he gives him his remaining years, over 100, while he sleeps and then falls from a bridge as his time ends. With the death of his mother Will decides he will make for New Greenwich and the High Life after giving his closest friend, a family man but also something of a drunkard ten years. Arriving in the top area he books into a top hotel and buys a racing car and meets the daughter of an entrepreneur who operate a time loan company. Will plays the father and his friends at Poker in the Casino where entrance for non members involving giving the doorman a year but where he quickly wins over 1000 years and gets invited to party the man is hosting where he also begins a relationship with the daughter whose father is suffocating in his protection and she is bored with the life she is leading.

Order in this society is maintained by Time Keepers, a force who are kept on their toes by being paid sufficient for a day by day existence as long as they perform to the standards of the senior management. The problem is that the chief Time Keeper on the streets who has held the role for 50 years refuses to accept an imbalance so when he finds that Will has moved Time Zones he arrests him at the party and removes all the time back to his normal ration of a day per day while the position is further investigated. Will escapes kidnapping the daughter and escaping back to the ghetto to where they are robbed by the local villains and then finds that his friend has killed himself by drink after being given the time. As their respective time runs out they are able to pawn her diamond earrings as the store is closing and then attempt to get the father to provide a thousand years of time for the daughter with a view to donating to the local time mission, When father refuses and sends in the Time Keeper, the shoots and injures the man so they both become outlaws initially with a small price on their heads but which rises eventually to 100 years after they successfully steal father’s store of One Million years of time from his vault. They are nearly destroyed by the local villains who have a deal with the Time Keeper to carry on as they have as long as they do not move into another time zone and eventually they have a similar escape from the Time Keeper renewing their time from his top up machine in his car.

In this contemporary version of Robin Hood in the final scene they are about to raid the state bank for time to disperse among those previously restricted to living from day to time and at the whim of the controllers who raise costs and reduce payments to ensure the population is kept under control and in order. Reminds me of the present Capitalists governments especially here in the UK and which brings me to the political meeting I attended in Jarrow on Tuesday evening but this is another writing.