In Time

Andrew Niccol’s 109 minute film is set where everyone stops ageing at twenty five and dies when the counter on the forearm empties, with time used as currency. That rule locks the casting too. Since nobody ages, there is no aged up makeup and no face that can signal a generation gap: Olivia Wilde plays the mother of Justin Timberlake, three years her senior in real life. Every family tie must be established in dialogue, and for the first half hour working out who is related to whom takes real effort. For cinematographer Roger Deakins this was a first. After more than three decades on celluloid he shot digitally here, on what was then a prototype Arri Alexa. The visible consequence is a dystopia assembled from real locations and hard saturated light rather than effects, so anyone expecting an elaborate future built in a computer finds almost none. In the month of release Harlan Ellison sued over similarities to his story Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman, then withdrew after seeing the film; the joint statement recorded that no payment and no credit were given. The forty million dollar production took 174 million worldwide, 136 million of it outside North America. Not for you if you want the premise developed: the rules never widen after the first twenty minutes.