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Brielle Ambrister
Robert Phillips
Cultural Media Literacy Honors
May 22, 2016
In Time
What kind of people would remain complicit in the segregation and
oppression of those who are most in need of care and protection? The answer is the
vast majority of Americans who watch as the poor get poorer and the rich get richer
under a capitalist regime. This is because the rich dont just get richer in currency,
but in social and political representation; the poor dont just struggle for nickels and
dimes, but for the education and business opportunities which they have been
denied since birth. Whats more is that with a given income gap comes the class
segregation that allows those with the power (the hyper-rich) to systematically
underrepresent, underfeed, and under educate those who truly need a voice,
wielding an ever deepening problem with capitalism. In Andrew Niccols film In
Time, he exchanges coins and dollar bills for time periods of individual lives to
equate currency to human worth, separates classes with symbolic borders called
Time Zones to articulate the improbability of climbing the class ladder, and
advocates for a systematic change in capitalist economies to solve the income gap.
As very well put by Helen O'hara in a film review with Empire, In Time is a
film anthem for the 99 percent, a blistering attack on an unjust system that keeps
the have-nots living moment to moment and the have-yachts living high on the
pork. Niccol extenuates that notion of living moment to moment by creating a
dystopia in which time quite literally is money: coffee costs 4 minutes and a night at
an expensive hotel can cost 2 months. His main character Will Salas along with the

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rest of the lower class typically live with about a day on the green digital clock on
their arms (the balance of their remaining life as well as the money to their name)
and, as a result, they find themselves running. Its in this poor ghetto called Dayton
that Niccol sets a heart wrenching scene where Wills mom runs to him for two
hours although her clock shows about a second under that. Will sees her running
and just before he can get to her to transfer some of his time, her clock runs out
and shes gone. The nature of her death along with so many others lying in the
streets of the ghetto forces the viewer to draw an intimate parallel to money and
human life.
In his pursuit to expose the existence of class segregation, Andrew Niccol
doesnt stop with a struggling portrayal of the lowest class dying off like fleas in one
overpopulated town. He utilizes tangible barriers called Time Zones which
separate one class from another as a symbol of the poverty cycle that traps
generation after generation in the lower rungs of the class ladder. Just like the
reality of these barriers, the Time Zones in the film require the privilege of money to
pass through; to move through the confinements of the classes, one must already
reside near the top. The audience only sees the barriers in the frame because Will
received a century from a suicidal man who moved to the slums of Dayton from the
highest time zone. The fact that Will receives the means to climb up the class ladder
so artificially and unrealistically satirizes the idea of meritocracy as effectively as
the Time Zones symbolic confinement.
Nearly the entirety of criticisms against In Time appears to be baseless,
pseudo-intellectual appraisals of the extent to which the films storyline and casting
critiques capitalism. Noah Berlatsky with The Atlantic asserts that In Time wants
to be a critique of capitalism. Instead, it ends up an unintentionally searing satire of

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America's utter inability to critique capitalism. Berlatsky goes on to say that the
films central metaphor is so sublimely obvious it feels like it's been stolen from a
forgotten Star Trek script, yet fails to address why that clarity functions as a
shortcoming to an audience that would most readily question capitalist ideals given
a parallel that can be immediately recognized as the allegory that it is. Over and
over again articles such as this bash what Berlatsky deems as a grossly contrived
storyline which leaves a slim, movie-star hot 25-year-old corpse in the streets
when that is not, needless to say, generally how the poor go out. Yet this is not
Hollywoods rose colored depiction of the working poor, but rather a vital allusion to
the youth that are being most directly affected by the audiences inaction. Berlatsky
concludes his critique with the proposition that In Time presents itself as against
the system when in reality its dreams of rebellion are wholly inside that system, to
provide a key example of the baseless claims so frequently made against this film.
The rebellion Niccol outlines at the films conclusion is not just clearly outside of
capitalism, it resides between socialism and communism: Will and his accomplice
steal an eon worth of time from the rich and redistribute it to the poorest district,
effectively breaking the entire system.
However, this feat, indisputably outside of the system in which in criticizes, is
not entirely clear. It is through the ambiguity of the solution that Andrew Niccol
provides that leads the audience to make the assumption that its not necessarily
communism or socialism that will bring relief to this unprecedented class disparity:
its change. He doesnt kill off the bad guy time-keeper (who is the enforcer and
embodiment of the problem) as a demonized follower of the bourgeoisie, but allows
the audience to empathize with his ignorance in the faults of the system, by
structuring his death as such. Demonizing him in his death would be more indicative

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of a solution through communism, as the fatal overthrow of the bad guy is its
trademark. Instead, the time keeper is simply so caught up in the chase of the
revolt that he suddenly looks down at his life clock to see that he has five seconds
left, and being nowhere near the rest of his stored time, he dies with the ignorance
found amongst the rich privilege that died along with him. Niccol alludes to
socialism to tear it back down in the same respect. Will Salas takes down the major
corporation called Weis when he steals an era of time and poses the question Is it
stealing when its already stolen? suggesting that a monopoly which occupies that
much of the time in circulation was inherently unfairly acquired, similar to the
decadences of the top 1% under American capitalism. Yet thats where the socialist
ideals stop short of occupying enough of the films focus to function as a solution.
Specificities of Niccols solution to the income gap undefined, he leaves the
audience with the idea that any well intentioned change will suffice in Americas
struggle for class equality.