Original subtitles

It takes approximately 500 pounds to crush a human skull.

But the human emotion is a much more delicate thing.

Take Suzy, my first real girlfriend.

My first real breakup,

happening right in front of me.

I never thought it was going to be similar to car crash.

I've slammed the brakes,

and I'm skidding towards an emotional impact.

So is this all my fault?

Me. Ben Willis.

It's funny what goes through your mind at a time like this.

The two-and-a-half years we spent together.

The promises we made.

The holidays we took with her parents.

The lamp we bought at Ikea together.

It was my final year at art college.

And in the weeks that followed the breakup,

I tried to figure out what went wrong.

Why did we break up?

It's funny, but when I think back now the reason seems so small.

One day she's with me, and she's saying “I love you,”

and the next week she's with someone else.

Probably saying the same thing.

So did she really love me?

What is love anyway?

And is it really that fleeting?

Forget about her. You don't wanna waste your time

thinking about a girl that dumped you for a loser like Steve Jenkins.

She didn't dump me.

Why did she chuck you anyway?

It ended

'cause Suzy thinks the grass is always greener on the other side.

She's always worrying about there being a better party to go to.

Or a better boyfriend to be had.

I just felt I could never make her happy.

And then Steve Jenkins started texting her.

How did Steve Jenkins get her number?

It was a good point.

I only imagined the worst.

I don't want to think about it.

You need to go out with a beautiful girl. A model or something.

Why?

Well, because if you've got a beautiful girl on your arm,

then you must be worth having.

Women are in competition with each other, you see.

Suzy sees you with a sexy baby, she'll think to herself

“if I can get Ben back from that beautiful girl,

then I must be more beautiful than her.”

Sean's success with women was pretty impressive.

It's true. Ask your mom.

The age-old question. What is love?

Excuse me.

That's good. That's perfect.

Ben, Mr Adams here has given his time up for you.

Don't you think we should show him a little bit of respect?

Excuse me.

I live in student accommodation not far from the college.

It's basically a four-story concrete block

housing some 120 hormone-crazed students.

This is the haunting period.

The time when the demons of regret come for you.

She stood right there

when I said those words:

“I'm sorry.

I don't think I can make you happy.

Maybe we should break up.”

And that's when she got angry.

Hello?

Suzy, it's me, Ben.

Ben! I was asleep. What is it?

Suzy, um…

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry too.

Do you think there's any chance we'll get back together?

I don't think so, Ben.

I think it ran its course.

Besides, I'm with Steve now.

Have you slept with him?

Yes.

Was it good? I mean, is it better than—

I don't wanna talk about it with you, Ben.

I've gotta go. Sorry, Ben.

Suzy?

To think about her now with someone else,

it felt like all the oxygen had been sucked from the room.

After my breakup with Suzy, I just couldn't fall asleep anymore.

The more I tried to sleep, the less tired I felt.

I was wide awake.

I tried everything.

I'd just become immune to sleep.

I suddenly found I had eight extra hours.

My life had been extended by a third.

I wanted time to pass quickly, but instead I was forced to witness

the passing of every second of every hour.

I wanted the hurt I felt to go away,

but in some cruel trick of events,

I now had even more time on my hands.

More time to think about Suzy.

Would you mind getting out? Just checking that wheel?

I took the bus with no real place to go.

I watched the landscape slowly change as it clung to the last hours of sunlight,

before leaving me to get another sleepless night.

I started to read all the books I wished I'd had time to read.

With the extra hours, I even had time to reread my favorite ones.

But she was never far from my mind.

Two pounds 75, please.

Ah, how much is it without these two?

One pound 70.

It was getting obvious that I needed to trade some of my time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. It all looks fantastic, man.

I think you'll fit in very well here.

It's a great feeling inside, Ben.

It's marvelous. We hope you've enjoyed reading about

what it's like to be part of Sainsbury's and listening.

I know, I've been through this with you.

There's so many opportunities, Ben. It's a life thing.

I could feel a faint shift in a faraway place.

A current of unknown consequences was on its way

moving towards me like an unstoppable wave of fate.

T-E-A-M-W-O-R-K. Work.

Teamwork, Ben.

Welcome aboard.

And so I started working the night shift at Sainsbury's.

During the hours most normal people are sleeping,

I'm busy trading my time.

I give them my extra eight hours, and they give me money. Cash back.

–Hi. –Oh, hi.

I'm late again. Jenkins is gonna kill me. See you later.

Yeah, see ya.

–Sharon! –Yes, Mr Jenkins?

–Late again, Sharon. –I'm sorry, Mr Jenkins.

–Second time this week. –I know, Mr Jenkins.

I'm sorry, it won't happen again.

Okay.

My first year at art college was boring to say the least.

But it helped me to appreciate the fundamentals of still life.

I'd like to remind the customers that there's a special

two for the price of one offer on aisle ten.

Fresh bread and cakes. That's aisle ten for a special two for the price of one offer.

Well, don't just stare at it, Ben!

Clean it up.

You see, I've always wanted to be a painter.

And like many artists before me,

the female form has always been a great source of inspiration.

I've always been in awe of the power they unknowingly possess.

Now, are you going to clean them up or not?

There is an art to dealing with the boredom of an eight-hour shift.

An art to putting your mind somewhere else while the seconds slowly tick away.

I found that all the people working here

had perfected their own individual art.

Take Sharon Pintey.

Sharon knows rule number one. The clock is the enemy.

The basic rule is this:

the more you look at the clock, the slower the time goes.

It will uncover the hiding place of your mind

and torture it with every second.

This is the basic art in dealing with the trade of your time.

Any cash back?

This is Barry Brickman.

You see, Barry thinks of himself as a bit of a daredevil stuntman.

For a start, Barry is quite well-known.

When one of Barry's bike tricks went wrong,

the cameraman put it on the internet.

Barry has stuck to his scooter ever since.

Matt Stephens is also a king scooterer.

And what was the other thing?

And what was the other thing?

–Sausage! –Oh, yeah.

Now Barry and Matt are good friends.

There you go. Take care.

Between them, they have come up with a very different way

of dealing with the trade of their time.

Look. Look.

Theirs is an art to finding anything to do that isn't work.

A few days later, Barry and Matt were reported

for what they called “helping the ladies.”

It was these shampoo bottles that sent them on their quest.

Barry and Matt knew what they looked like.

And they knew that the women in the supermarket knew what they looked like.

Their theory was that even though it was a sex toy

masquerading as a bottle of shampoo,

women would like to try it as a sex toy

but were embarrassed to buy it because they knew what it looked like.

The decision to buy it would be an easier one if they were already at the checkout.

If they didn't object, then Barry and Matt knew

they'd helped a bottle find a happy home.

Barry had challenged Matt to a scooter race

in which they would sprint down one aisle and up the next.

They would do all 14 aisles, and then back to the starting line.

They had been waiting for the day the manager called in sick.

The art of doing something else other than the work you're supposed to do, is addictive.

The excitement of doing something that you shouldn't be doing,

along with the consequences if you're caught doing it,

are so strong that it often pulls others away from their own art.

On your marks, get set, go!

We got winded!

I hadn't slept in two weeks.

My breakup with Suzy had left me with a sense that time had become unhinged.

I drifted between imagination and reality,

between past and present with increasing ease.

I feel like a real man. You like men.

You like real men, don't you?

When I'm out there in the kit,

on the pitch with the boys,

I look like a god, I'm an Adonis.

I keep myself in good shape.

I see the looks. I ignore them.

I feel the bolts of time slowly coming away from the breakup.

Time manipulation is not a precise science.

Like any art, it's personal to the individual.

So what is the art in making my shift go so fast?

I imagine the opposite.

That time is frozen.

I imagine the remote control for life has been paused.

Within this frozen world, I'm able to walk freely and unnoticed.

Nobody would even know that time had stopped.

And when it started back up again,

the invisible join would be seamless except for a slight shudder.

Not unlike the feeling of somebody walking over your grave.

That moment when you see someone walking down the street

who is so beautiful you just can't help but stare…

Well, imagine as I do, that with the world on pause

it becomes very easy to understand the concept of beauty.

To have it frozen in front of you.

Captured.

Unaware.

For me, this fascination with beauty started at a very young age.

I was six or seven, and my mom and dad had taken on a foreign student.

She was in her late teens,

and was studying English at a nearby school.

Being Swedish, the walk from the shower to her room didn't need to be a modest one.

It was at that moment that something very profound happened to me.

I was exposed to the female form in a way I had never experienced.

I felt fascination and wonder at the beauty of her nakedness.

And I wanted to freeze the world so that I could live in that moment for a week.

I have never had a feeling of such completeness.

To this day I still think it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

You dropped these.

And would it be wrong?

Would they hate me for seeing them?

I mean, really seeing them?

I read once about a woman whose secret fantasy was to have an affair with an artist.

She thought that he would really see her.

He would see every curve,

every line, every indentation,

and love them because they were part of the beauty that made her unique.

And when I'm ready, all I have to do to start time again

is crack my fingers.

You look like shit.

Cheers.

–Still not sleeping? –No.

–Feeling any better about Suzy? –No.

–Wanna talk about it? –No.

No? Why?

Because every morning you come by,

and every morning I talk about the same thing.

And I'm bored of saying the same thing, and I'm bored of feeling shit about it.

And most of all I'm bored of being awake 24 hours a day.

Eew! Look who didn't get out of bed on the wrong side this morning.

Very funny.

But seriously, you're gonna feel like shit. It's gonna take time.

For instance, how long ago did you think about her

before we started having this conversation?

About ten minutes before you knocked on the door.

Oh, yeah. And what was the thought?

I thought about the dust.

The dust? God, you're weird!

Anyway, whatever. My point is, every day you think about her

and the things that you associate with her less and less.

Before long, you'll go a whole day without thinking about her.

You know what might help speed up the process?

What?

Me and Sean had been friends since we were five.

We lived across the street from one another, and grew up together.

For his 12th birthday, Sean's mom and dad

had bought him a state-of the-art computer.

Oh, mom!

Come on, boys, it's a nice day. Why don't you play in the park?

No. We're okay playing this.

Okay, I'm off shopping. You be all right by yourselves?

Yes, mom. Bye, mom.

Bye, Mrs Higgins.

I won't be long.

–Wanna see something? –What?

–What are they? –Girls with no clothes on.

Sean had found the magazines under his mom and dad's bed.

The Swedish student was one thing, but this was something completely different.

The smiles on the girls' faces and the total lack of shyness

about what they were showing the camera was so confusing for me.

I had never seen the female part up close and in so much detail.

I guess I imagined something neater,

like a smooth hole drilled into a piece of wood.

The sort of hole where you might place a wooden peg.

But the reality was much more sexually aggressive.

It was hard to imagine that my teacher, Mrs Booth,

had one under her skirt that looked just like it.

Mom!

Forgot my purse.

Hey, what have you two been up to?

After that, Sean's mom always thought we were gay.

What will help speed up the process?

You need to distract yourself with a couple of Natalies.

A Natalie was a term that Sean had coined for any sexual encounter

that happened with a girl you weren't in a relationship with.

The term had come from a girl called Natalie who lived across the street from Sean.

–Hello. Is Natalie in? –Yeah. Natalie!

–Yeah? –It's for you.

You see, Sean had worked out the connection

between the smiling faces of the girls in the magazines

and the fact that they were naked.

Fifty p.

That's it.

Natalie became one of the most popular girls on the street.

Croissants on special offer.

She had massive tits.

Very funny.

We were only having a laugh.

Who's that?

That's a new kid.

Apparently he's a martial arts expert.

Hey, mate!

Come here.

What's your name?

Brian.

Ben says you know kung fu.

Yeah.

–So you reckon you can have me? –Yeah.

–Oh, yeah? –Yeah.

Show us your moves then.

Grab my arm.

That's not funny.

Hi.

Hi, Ben.

You're not working tonight?

No, I swapped two hours this week.

Is that a pickle sandwich?

Oh, ah, yeah.

Could I have a bite? I'm starving.

Mmm. Thanks.

–What? –You got some there.

–Mmm. –There.

Let me.

Thanks.

I wanted to freeze time.

I wanted to savor that moment.

To live in that moment for a week.

But I couldn't stop it.

Only slow it.

And before I knew it, she was gone.

After the door closed, I felt like the last person on earth.

What are you doing?

–Jenkins wanted us to go and fill the shelves. –So here we are.

Iiiieeee.

Take no notice of him. He's love struck. He asked Sharon out today.

You did? What did she say?

She said “Yes.” He's taking her

to the pictures tomorrow night.

Then it's back to mine. I'll need about half an hour to talk away me face.

And then, she's gonna get some of this.

Crush.

It's funny how the same word for the feeling of attraction

can be used for the feeling of disappointment.

The Oxford English dictionary states one of the meanings for the word crushed

as “a strong and unreasoning, but transitory attachment.”

I had three crushes when I was young.

The first was an athlete called Zola Budd.

She was 18, and looked like a tomboy with a small, slender frame.

But it was the fact that Zola Budd defiantly ran barefoot

that made her so completely attractive for me.

It was the Los Angeles olympics that would go down in history.

In the 3,000 meter race, Zola Budd clashed with the American, Mary Decker.

Budd's heart for the race was left where Decker fell.

Zola finished seventh.

Ben, it's time for bed now. You've got school tomorrow.

Well, well. What an upset.

Can somebody tell me something about the white blood cells? Tim?

Uh, they help fight off bacteria and germs in the body.

Very well done.

Types…

of cells.

The second crush was for my biology teacher, Mrs Booth.

Okay, class, who can tell me something about cells?

She was a confident woman whose figure-hugging outfits

hinted at the sexiness that lay hidden beneath.

I imagined Mrs Booth asking me to stay behind after school

and showing me the same thing under her skirt

as the girls I'd seen in the magazines with Sean.

But the main crush I had was with a girl called Tanya Green.

When I looked at Tanya, I didn't just see her, I felt her.

The white blood cells and red blood cells work together.

Oy!

The next day, Tanya caused a lot of excitement in the class.

Tanya had broken her arm falling from a swing,

and her cast had caused much excitement amongst the other kids at the school.

Settle down now, please, class.

That's enough.

But I saw it differently.

It was the way Tanya dealt with it.

The way she scratched an itch.

The way it restricted her movements.

The increasing amount of graffiti that appeared on it during its six-week life span.

Would you like to sign it?

Just here.

Thanks.

Go away! Stop it!

On the day the cast finally came off,

Tanya's arm was covered in hair.

Go on back to the jungle.

The six weeks without light had caused the hair to grow thick and black.

But while the other kids joked and called her ”monkey,“

it only heightened my fascination for her.

Don't cry.

You don't have to worry about them.

I think you're beautiful the way you are.

Will you be my girlfriend?

Yes.

There was a place that I often went to by myself.

It was just behind the school.

It was close enough to still hear the screams and shouts of the kids playing their games.

But at the same time, it felt hidden away from them.

I had arranged to meet Tanya there.

Whatcha?

Whatcha?

You wanna kiss me?

So this was to be my first kiss.

Yeah.

Hey! Where you going?

I gotta go. I'll kiss you tomorrow.

–But tomorrow's Saturday. –Meet me here at 11:00.

I often came to play around the school grounds on a saturday.

The familiar building, so unfamiliar in its quietness.

Peaceful, as if time had frozen still.

It's like the walls of this room.

It keeps the whole building standing.

Tanya's parents had taken her on a surprise holiday to America.

They set up home there, and never returned.

It was the first time my heart felt the other meaning of crush.

Checkmate.

What's wrong with you? You normally kick my arse at chess.

Have you met someone?

Well, come on. Give me the juice.

No, it's nothing really. Just a girl at work I think is nice.

Nice? Nice what? Nice rack?

No.

Well, yeah, but nothing like that.

What? Girlfriend material?

She got small hands?

–What's that got to do with anything? –Makes your willy look big.

You're such a loser.

So have you asked her out?

–No. Someone already beat me to it. –Ahh, she got a boyfriend.

No, but one of the guys at work asked her out. She said “yes.”

They're going to the pictures tonight.

That doesn't mean she fancies him.

She might just like him, and want someone to go to pictures with.

How many girls have you taken to the pictures and then snogged?

Oh, yeah!

What?

Quite a few.

There you go.

Can I have that?

Yeah, yeah, that's right, Rory.

Well, of course I played professionally, before the injury.

Any day, Rory.

You name the date, me and my boys'll be there.

All right. Sunday.

Just don't go crying to your mama.

–Ciao. –Whatever.

Tosser.

Game on.

2,000 feet jump.

Can't beat it. 3,000, kill ya.

There he is!

So, how'd it go with Sharon?

–Oh, mate! –So, did ya?

Of course I did. She loved it.

Couldn't get enough of it. She went like the toilet door on a bombay shrimp trawler.

–Rack? –Well, put it this way.

At least you know your kids will never go hungry.

And?

Like an artist's pocket.

Okay, champs. Rory Brown.

Manager of Sainsbury's, Islington,

has challenged us to a football match on Sunday night.

Finished?

Good.

The reputation of this supermarket is at stake.

Your reputations, as employees, are at stake.

This is not just a game of football.

This is what it means to be a modern-day gladiator!

Now, I want you to think of me as Russell Crowe.

And you, you're all the other slaves.

And as slaves, you will play to the death!

For what happens on Sunday night, will echo through eternity.

Sunday. 8:00 pm. Sunny sports center.

You have got to got to be joking, right?

We're gonna get murdered.

Aaah!

–Hi. –All right.

Ah, bollocks!

–Playing on this right wing. Like a train, I am. –Hiya.

Heads up!

Gather round, Whitechapel. Whitechapel, gather round.

Okay, chaps, this is it!

That is Islington Sainsbury's over there.

All I can see are a lot of pretty uniforms.

Take a good look at one another.

Why?

Natural-born killers! Every one of you!

So let's get stuck in there and settle this! Huh? Huh?

Huh?

Hey, Barry, I've got this really great game.

All right, Rory.

Jenkins.

There's some pretty uniforms you boys got.

See you've brought your top team this time.

Looks can be deceiving.

–Well, that's obvious. –What?

Right. Call.

Heads. No, tails.

Tails it is.

Come along!

We've got one goal.

All right. Get in your spaces.

–Ahh! –Look at that!