"For a few to be immortal, many must die... You really don't know, do you? Everyone can't live forever! Where would we put them? Why do you think your time runs out? Why do you think taxes and prices go up the same day in the ghetto? The cost of living keeps rising to make sure that people keep dying. How else could we live a million years?"'In time' is a very nice (well, watchable) class war movie for the end of this turbulent year, with a message simple enough for the working masses to grasp. That's what I love in the Hollywood left!
Unfortunately the movie itself is not really worth that much...
It certainly beats such box office failures like Equilibrium or Absolon. It might even beat the Island, since it's much less pretentious and much more emotional. But it's absolutely nothing compared to the immortal masterpieces like V for Vendetta or La Haine. These are not even to think about, lest you want the ultimate disappointment. The characters are rather simplistic and full of silly clichés, not powerful enough. The sets are really lame, just like the visual effects and the extras. You don't expect professional acting from an extra (I used to be one), but at least some gesture and mimicry would be really appreciated. In this film, however, they are just walking around from point A to point B as if they were in a shopping mall. Not even a hundred young women in sexy outfits (including the protagonist) are able to compensate for that. But the acting and the drama is okay. It doesn't make you cry, but it's more or less genuine and personal.
It certainly beats such box office failures like Equilibrium or Absolon. It might even beat the Island, since it's much less pretentious and much more emotional. But it's absolutely nothing compared to the immortal masterpieces like V for Vendetta or La Haine. These are not even to think about, lest you want the ultimate disappointment. The characters are rather simplistic and full of silly clichés, not powerful enough. The sets are really lame, just like the visual effects and the extras. You don't expect professional acting from an extra (I used to be one), but at least some gesture and mimicry would be really appreciated. In this film, however, they are just walking around from point A to point B as if they were in a shopping mall. Not even a hundred young women in sexy outfits (including the protagonist) are able to compensate for that. But the acting and the drama is okay. It doesn't make you cry, but it's more or less genuine and personal.
You can tell the quality of a class war movie by measuring the power of criticism it gets from the right-wing press. If you find some bitching about the stuff supporting terrorism or being anti-christian, you can be pretty sure that it's a good one. This movie will probably never reach the attention of America's self-appointed saviours, and that's a real shame!
But still, in spite of all these shortcomings, the film makes a good point which you cannot miss even if you want to. (And it also makes the film better than the Island after all.) As the burned-out, disappointed rich guy and an hour later the super evil banking tycoon both explain the way how the system works, it's really hard not to see the allegory of today's crisis-ridden global capitalism.
To be honest, this is the only reason why the movie is worth watching. Although there must be quite a few people all too happy with their conclusion about time being too precious to waste... Well, that's too bad for them! They are mentally beyond repair, so there's nothing we can do. For now, let's just focus on those who do get the point.
For those, I have one question: Is human lifetime really that much different from any other resource being commodified as we speak?
For example, living space. How about this one: "For a few to live in castles, many must live on the streets"? Sounds not very good, does it? Of course nobody really likes this situation except for the true basket cases of Ayn Rand Syndrome (ARS), but still we don't prohibit the building of castles and divert our resources on building small apartments instead.
Why not?
Because that would be "Socialism", I know. Actually it wouldn't, but for the sake of this argument, let's just say so. Since it goes against all those great American values of freedom, it's socialism - whatever that word might actually mean... Okay! Then why is the prohibition of immortality so much in concordance with these brilliant and splendid values? What if the people join this system willingly? Most probably they would. People really want to stay forever young, after all! Of course there will be some renitents who will never join in, so they just get old and die naturally.
In fact, this system with lifetime being bought and sold is very similar to the "Cap & Trade" scheme designed to keep CO2 emissions at bay. With the invention of immortality, we would also have to keep something at bay: human population. After the successful(?) application of emissions trading, the solution would come very straightforward: let's just buy and sell this limited amount of human lifetime like everything else. Hey! That's how a free market works! What's so evil about that?
So what about that castle prohibition, now again? Why is living space so much less important than living time? Why is living on the street so much less tragic than dying on the street? Not to mention those who actually die there, by the way. There are quite a lot of them in India, for example. So what's the real difference between the world of today and the gloomy dystopian settings of this movie?
The real difference is maybe the fact that in this world, rich people do not just fool the poor people, but they also fool themselves. None of them is even a little bit like Philip Weis, for that matter. They might be arrogant and selfish, they might be pathologically greedy, and they might speak some outrageously senseless bullshit from time to time, but they never wear make-up and they never believe in this oldschool darwinist crap about the survival of the fittest. They don't suffer from ARS...
As a matter of fact, the CEO is not an evil creature. As Hannah Arendt would say, he is terrifyingly normal. He almost always lives some very decent life, completely eager to become the living testament of the American Dream. He never says "Oh, life is unfair, so what?" or anything like that. Instead, he is trying to show you with every aspect of his lifestyle that he really deserve all that fortune to the very last cent. He wants to make you see that he is not only the best manager you can get, but also a very nice, good-looking, charitable and friendly person. He is either the ultimate god-fearing family man or the ultimate progressive humanist with a utopian vision for mankind. He is an extremely persuasive perfectionist. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to convince the employees and shareholders for the business plan. In his very essence, the CEO is a politician.
So how are these nice and super decent people come to manage such a cruel, senseless, mercyless, and in every way inhuman system which capitalism actually is? The answer is one short word, albeit in classical greek: Ideology
Ideology is not about logical arguments. It is about feelings of attachment to some abstract ideas which we usually call values. Values, oh yeah! The hottest playing cards of politics! Everything has to be based on these "values". So what are these things, after all? Actually they are nothing more and nothing less than implicit statements which we regard as axioms beyond the scope of debate. The word 'implicit' means that we do not say or write them down anywhere, but still we believe in them. Such beliefs can sometimes be very nice, like for example the supremacy of "socially liberal" attitudes and policies like gay marriage, but sometimes rather nasty. The notion that capitalism is the only morally justifiable system of labour division and socialism on its contrary is something inherently evil is also a belief which we are not allowed to question in the world of today.
Marxism also has axiomatic statements, but it does not hold them implicitly in order to preserve their holiness and protect them from criticism. This is what ideologies mostly do. Marxists usually formulate their axioms in a very clear and unambiguous way. This makes Marxism more like a science than an ideology in "common sense".
Marxists do not assert that their world view is the only valid and righteous one, but they assert that it is in the best interest of the working class to share this point of view. Of course it is not in the interest of the isolated individual, but his class as a whole. That's the subject of Marxism. The subject of liberalism is the isolated individual with its indisputable rights and freedoms. The subject of conservativism is culture. They assert that culture is an organic entity which cannot be changed just like that, but can only evolve very slowly and gradually.
To be honest, this is the only reason why the movie is worth watching. Although there must be quite a few people all too happy with their conclusion about time being too precious to waste... Well, that's too bad for them! They are mentally beyond repair, so there's nothing we can do. For now, let's just focus on those who do get the point.
For those, I have one question: Is human lifetime really that much different from any other resource being commodified as we speak?
For example, living space. How about this one: "For a few to live in castles, many must live on the streets"? Sounds not very good, does it? Of course nobody really likes this situation except for the true basket cases of Ayn Rand Syndrome (ARS), but still we don't prohibit the building of castles and divert our resources on building small apartments instead.
Why not?
Because that would be "Socialism", I know. Actually it wouldn't, but for the sake of this argument, let's just say so. Since it goes against all those great American values of freedom, it's socialism - whatever that word might actually mean... Okay! Then why is the prohibition of immortality so much in concordance with these brilliant and splendid values? What if the people join this system willingly? Most probably they would. People really want to stay forever young, after all! Of course there will be some renitents who will never join in, so they just get old and die naturally.
In fact, this system with lifetime being bought and sold is very similar to the "Cap & Trade" scheme designed to keep CO2 emissions at bay. With the invention of immortality, we would also have to keep something at bay: human population. After the successful(?) application of emissions trading, the solution would come very straightforward: let's just buy and sell this limited amount of human lifetime like everything else. Hey! That's how a free market works! What's so evil about that?
So what about that castle prohibition, now again? Why is living space so much less important than living time? Why is living on the street so much less tragic than dying on the street? Not to mention those who actually die there, by the way. There are quite a lot of them in India, for example. So what's the real difference between the world of today and the gloomy dystopian settings of this movie?
The real difference is maybe the fact that in this world, rich people do not just fool the poor people, but they also fool themselves. None of them is even a little bit like Philip Weis, for that matter. They might be arrogant and selfish, they might be pathologically greedy, and they might speak some outrageously senseless bullshit from time to time, but they never wear make-up and they never believe in this oldschool darwinist crap about the survival of the fittest. They don't suffer from ARS...
As a matter of fact, the CEO is not an evil creature. As Hannah Arendt would say, he is terrifyingly normal. He almost always lives some very decent life, completely eager to become the living testament of the American Dream. He never says "Oh, life is unfair, so what?" or anything like that. Instead, he is trying to show you with every aspect of his lifestyle that he really deserve all that fortune to the very last cent. He wants to make you see that he is not only the best manager you can get, but also a very nice, good-looking, charitable and friendly person. He is either the ultimate god-fearing family man or the ultimate progressive humanist with a utopian vision for mankind. He is an extremely persuasive perfectionist. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to convince the employees and shareholders for the business plan. In his very essence, the CEO is a politician.
So how are these nice and super decent people come to manage such a cruel, senseless, mercyless, and in every way inhuman system which capitalism actually is? The answer is one short word, albeit in classical greek: Ideology
Ideology is not about logical arguments. It is about feelings of attachment to some abstract ideas which we usually call values. Values, oh yeah! The hottest playing cards of politics! Everything has to be based on these "values". So what are these things, after all? Actually they are nothing more and nothing less than implicit statements which we regard as axioms beyond the scope of debate. The word 'implicit' means that we do not say or write them down anywhere, but still we believe in them. Such beliefs can sometimes be very nice, like for example the supremacy of "socially liberal" attitudes and policies like gay marriage, but sometimes rather nasty. The notion that capitalism is the only morally justifiable system of labour division and socialism on its contrary is something inherently evil is also a belief which we are not allowed to question in the world of today.
Marxism also has axiomatic statements, but it does not hold them implicitly in order to preserve their holiness and protect them from criticism. This is what ideologies mostly do. Marxists usually formulate their axioms in a very clear and unambiguous way. This makes Marxism more like a science than an ideology in "common sense".
Marxists do not assert that their world view is the only valid and righteous one, but they assert that it is in the best interest of the working class to share this point of view. Of course it is not in the interest of the isolated individual, but his class as a whole. That's the subject of Marxism. The subject of liberalism is the isolated individual with its indisputable rights and freedoms. The subject of conservativism is culture. They assert that culture is an organic entity which cannot be changed just like that, but can only evolve very slowly and gradually.
The subject of socialism is the working class with its need to be in charge of the surplus value of its labour. We all know that there's a difference between the value we earn and the value we produce. That's where the profit comes from. Some liberals claim that it comes from innovation and human capital, but these are products of human work as well. A highly skilled engineer would never get his skills if it weren't for the combined effort of his teachers. And his teachers wouldn't be able to teach if there were no universities built up and maintained by workers. Still, the teachers don't get much of the value of capitalist innovation, not to mention the workers. All in all, socialism is better for the working class.
In the classic theory of Adam Smith, a perfect capitalism would have a perfect market to give everyone his fair share of the profits. As we all know, this has never been the case during the last three centuries. Capitalism, unlike evolution, is not fair. Contrary to what the evil Mr Weis tells us in the movie, evolution was relatively fair. It was a very cruel and merciless game, but in the end it always had the best individuals and groups who made it. That's why most species became more and more fit during the course. Otherwise they would have degenerated into a worthless bunch of shit.
That's what humans currently do.
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