If you were wondering exactly how to read those pesky arm clocks in In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried.
In the movie, the society it takes place in, when you hit 25-years-old, a biological clock kicks in and you have exactly one year to live. The time is shown on your arm. Time is the commodity in this society. Things cost time and you can make time by working. This is how folks stay alive.
But some have asked how the bloody heck do you read the arm clock in the movie?
After viewing the movie a few times on Blu-ray, (BTW, it looks awesome on Blu-ray), I figured out that the arm clocks in In Time actually read as
years-weeks-days-hours-minutes-seconds.
Through various scenes, here’s what I saw:
At one point, Olivia Wilde‘s arm clock read “000-00-2-23-54-36″ or 2 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes and 36 seconds.
And at first, I thought the first two numbers (from L to R) were years and months, but in the scene when the millionaire gives Timberlake his time, what I thought were months kept rolling over beyond 12… but never over 51. (I replayed that scene over and over, checking on that one.)
There was a scene where a baby had one year, and his arm read “0001-00-0-00-00-00.”
And the clincher was when we saw Amanda Seyfried’s arm clock turn on and we saw her one year start, her arm clock read “0000-51-6-23-59-5.”
So the arm clock reads years-weeks-days-hours-minutes-seconds.
About Bruce Simmons
I've been writing newsletters since 1999. Of late, I've been focusing on the entertainment consumer angle on mostly the sci-fi, fantasy and action genres of TV, movies and books.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
When timberlake wakes up in richville he has 0105:01:2:01:40:33 however ten minutes later when he sits down at the casino table it reads 0250:00:0:00:02:25. Where did he score an extra 146 years(it cost him a year just to enter the casino)
And when the time keeper confiscates his time it says 1040:51:6:05:50:08
@andrew
You have to assume that since the casino scene starts in the middle of a poker game, that he won those 146 years in a previous but not seen game with the millionair. Also in the poker scene we can see he wins the 13 figures by going all in, thats why when the time gets confiscated he has just under a millineum.