A Week of In Time (2011)
I watched In Time every night for a week while my wife was out of town. I ended it by doing a rough re-edit of the movie based on my notes from the week.
The film has an anti-capitalist message that falls flat due to a distracted writing and plot. In my edit, I sought to streamline the story and restore trust in the audience. I also noted some changes that could have been made during filming to help the message come through more clearly.
The nights went as follows:
Everything from here on is a spoiler
In Time is the story of a young man radicalized into a series of heists against the system by the unnecessary death of his mother.
The movie opens on our protagonist, Will Salas, explaining that time is currency due to genetic engineering, that everyone stays physically 25 forever, but once they turn 25, they only have 365 days on their clock.
He says goodbye to his hot mom, and goes to work. They are poor.
He goes to work, inflation is hitting hard. He goes to a bar after work to find his friend. A very rich man is flaunting his time at the bar. We are introduced to "the minutemen", a gang who rob people of their time. They try to steal the rich man's time, but Will prevents them and escapes with the rich man.
In a loft, the rich man reveals that he is 105 years old and wants to die. He also explains to Will that the poor must die for the rich to live. They go to sleep, but the rich man wakes up before Will and gives all his time, 100 years save 5 minutes, to Will. Then he sits on a bridge until he dies.
Will visits his friend to share his time and say goodbye because he will be taking his mother to New Greenwich, the rich part of town.
We cut to Will's mother having paid a loan, and getting on a bus, but the bus fare has gone up to 2 hours and she only has 90 minutes. It would take that long to walk. The bus driver tells her to run.
Will's mom dies in his arms because she ran out of time. He gets pissed.
He hires a car to New Greenwich with the intention of taking time from the rich. When he arrives we see the difference in behavior. He does everything too fast because he never has time.
He goes to the casino across from his hotel and wins 1000 years in poker against a rich guy. The rich guy's daughter invites him to a party the next night at their house.
Will buys a cool car, and goes to the party. He takes the rich guy's daughter, Sylvia, skinny dipping in the ocean after she confides that she's worried she'll never do anything foolish or brave.
They come back from the ocean and Timekeepers (cops) show up to question will about the original rich man's death. They take all his time except 2 hours. He escapes them and takes Sylvia hostage.
They drive away towards the ghetto. The Minutemen somehow know they're coming, ambush them, and steal almost all of Sylvia's time.
Will and Sylvia have 30 minutes to get more time. Visit Will's friend's apartment where his friend's wife reveals that he spent all of the time Will gave him drinking himself to death.
They hock Sylvia's earrings for 2 days. Will calls for the ransom. 1000 hours to the local timeline (soup kitchen).
Will and Sylvia go to Will's apartment to wait for the ransom and clean up. Sylvia wears Will's mom's clothes.
The ransom doesn't come, but Will says he's going to let Sylvia go anyway. She makes a call via payphone to her dad when the Timekeepers show up and try to take Will, but she shoots a Timekeeper.
They escape, now accomplices. They steal time and earrings from some rich lady. Then they start robbing time banks, giving away the time, and running from the Timekeepers.
(It gets a little fuzzy here)
They rob banks until the Minutemen find them to take their time and get a reward for their capture, but Will kills them and takes their time. (Timefighting is a thing. It's not important.)
Will is disheartened because the interest rates and prices are going up in the ghetto to account for all the new time. Sylvia asks what it would take to hurt the rich. Will says a million years (hyperbole). Sylvia says that it would take a million years (not hyperbole) and they should turn themselves in.
Will and Sylvia proceed to rob Sylvia's father of a million years he keeps in a vault. (He's a time banker and part of the global time banking cabal.)
They give the time away and have to run from the Timekeeper who's been onto them the whole time. Then they run to somewhere for some reason and almost run out of time, but they don't, and the Timekeeper does instead.
Then the entire economic system collapses as time floods the poor areas and they start walking to the rich areas. The Timekeepers all go home.
The movie ends with Will and Sylvia preparing to rob an even bigger bank, which I will refer to as Ft. Clox.
The end.
Time is not a fiat currency. The rich are harvesting it from the poor. (More thoughts on this after tomorrow's watch.)
The Timekeeper's motivations are fun.
The parallels between Sylvia and Will's mom are weird.
The cars are bitchin'. The sound design is pretty good too.
It explores the issue of wealth inequality, but fails to posit a viable alternative, given the constraints of its own world. (Is it a response to Logan's Run?) Since it fails to provide a"do this instead" message, we can cut a lot and still keep the message. In fact, one scene of someone paying with time, then "timing out" would sum up the movie. The rest is window dressing.
It's not, but it does show the downsides of having a currency backed by a physical good (humans). Child labor should be a much bigger thing.
Here's a variety of ideas. Not all of them should be implemented together.
Luckily, the movie is actually pretty light on score, so cuts should be easy.
Will can already be radicalized when we meet him. (Maybe a quick flashback to his mom dying when Sylvia puts on her clothes? Could make it dreamlike with the running.) He already has a motive because life in the ghetto sucks.
Just need to account for Sylvia's lost time. Honestly? Could keep them for that scene. Ghetto's rough. Or! Fade to black when they crash, and fade back in with the Minutemen's car pulling away. We save so much time in the third act by cutting them. (7+ minutes) Also, they're really stupid. Scene after the Minutemen finale takes place on a rooftop. The scene before is the rooftop chase. It's made to be cut.
We can accept that the police are looking for him. Careful though. They serve as a way to hide the time jumps in the A Plot.
Don't need to know how he got there. The car chase can happen with a stolen car. (Fancy driving will never be explained.)
This will be borne out by my mute rewatch. It's covered by Greta.
Would save 3 scenes. (After Will gets the time, after Will and Sylvia crash, and a shot after Will and Sylvia first hit the banks. Would miss some in-story explanation though. Probably best to keep Burrell.
Cut after Sylvia says "We look cute together."
He doesn't grow. He suppresses human nature. It comes through in the rest of the film.
Only takeaway is that Timekeeper Raymond Leon won't give up.
"That time can't leave the zone. Shoot on sight."
Could save a minute or two. And without the mom, the callback could be moot.
Time is silly. Heartbeats are slightly less silly. Would also mean running and cardio is super expensive. But masses could literally be opiated.
The Million years is infinite years instead. Will and Sylvia still give it away, cause chaos. Need to tweak Henry Hamilton's speech.
The rich should flaunt how slowly they can do things. Maybe add some flavor of watching a watercolor artist in real time or a clock that only has a day hand. The dancing illustrates it.
Just like real life.
He's an auditor, not a cop.
It adds nothing.
There are 2 options: Either the cabal is confident they will bring the zone back into order (meaning Will's victory is temporary), or they're scared enough to destroy the entire city. The film would be a statement.
Cut to the future. 2 teens lay on a hill watching the clouds. There are no numbers on their arms. One asks "do you need to go?", the other responds, "No, I've got time."
Based on Steven Soderbergh's cut of Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Minutemen are still pointless.
The ending should mirror the opening, but without conclusion:
The Timekeeper scenes are also bad and interrupt the flow of the plot. Cillian Murphy was the wrong choice or poorly directed. His character is "emotionless", but not in a good way.
This soundtrack matches up to this movie really well.
The casino scene is good. Whole scene is "show don't tell" Guy from Mad Men is actually acting his ass off, but it doesn't come through with the sound on.
Maybe it should have been the Mad Men guy's wife instead of daughter...
Oh my god, the Timekeeper scenes jolt you from every scene. Trust the audience to figure out how much time has passed.
One shots. Talking. Kills whatever momentum the movie has.
Cutting In Time as a silent movie would be a great exercise. Also, the soundtrack has stopped working so well. (Car chase).
Try cutting all the exterior shots of the car chase. Only cutting between the characters.
The Timefighting is really dumb in this watch. Will's giant mitt around Syliva's little forearm. "Oh yeah. Just watch your own time." OK.
I wonder if most student films would be better with a bitchin' score and no dialogue.
Phone calls are all tell don't show. Movies would be better without them.
Mad Men guy is the best actor in the whole movie. His voice is so steady that it belies all the acting he's doing.
Just realized there's some nice practical effects. Car crashes mostly.
Rooftop chase scene is just a reverse one-shot conversation with guns.
What would happen if someone cut off their arms? Where is the time stored?
Timefighting also only takes place in reverse one-shots.
I would not recommend anyone watch this movie like this. Too much talking.
Hierarchy of exposition:
Showing (no need for verbal communication)
Telling the characters
Telling the audience
Making Timekeeper Raymond Leon such a prominent character was a mistake. It turns the story into man vs. man instead of man vs. the world.
He would be a more interesting character if he were human. It's supposed to be a mystery why he's so dedicated, but we don't. He's too much of a stoic villain. It would be like wondering why Darth Vader is bad. It's not important or interesting. (Hot anti-prequel take, I know.)
The end...
My only new note: is it possible to tell another story in this setting?
Got the runtime down from 108 minutes to 93.
Cut the entire Minutemen plot, the car buying scene, and a lot of the timekeeper scenes that don't advance the plot.
Got it down 5 more minutes. Without credits, we’re probably closer to 80 minutes.
Cut the intro exposition, most of the Mom plot (moved to a brief dream sequence after arrival in New Greenwich), shortened some dialog, and shortened the ending to better match the mom scene (now absent, ironically)
Hung out with the cats and tried to keep my mouth shut about what I cut and complaints I had. I couldn't.
I think everyone should get this familiar with art they love or even just sort of like. Hunter S. Thompson typed out The Great Gatsby. Throw art on the table, cut it up, put it back, turn it back to front, figure out what makes it tick. Art is not a cat. It will live.
A movie that can't be changed is a spectacle. Some spectacles are remarkable, most aren't. Movies can be a shared dream. We should have something more to say than "That was good," or "That was reminiscent of another dream by another dreamer."
To the point that I think I might have accidentally done a performance art for a very small audience of my friends and family.
He did the music playback on set for all the dance scenes.