'Children of Men', the new Alfonso Cuaron sci-fi flick

That said, Owen is really excellent, he carries the film with a kind of sullen, drunken, physicality that work very well indeed especially given that for much of the action the camera is lurking behind his shoulder and simply following him. On which note, the cinematography is simply stunning, easily the best I've seen this year. Without laying on any spoilers, there are two one-take shots which left me mouth-agape with amazement.

It is incredibly visceral in parts, and makes for pretty uncomfortable viewing. I got the impression that Cuaron's depiction of a ruined England only a few years hence was actually a comment on the dire state of so many cities in the world right now. There's a savage immediacy to the film that makes it very compelling viewing and I'm keen to see it again.

but that's just the surprise-reveal of the trailer, innit? "IN A WORLD WHERE WOMEN ARE ALL BARREN" and then oh, hang on, she definitely seems pregnant...

Pfft, I'm judging something I haven't seen. I'll see it and then I'll tell you what I think.

***POSSIBLE SPOILER??***

i think its just the trailer - the pregnant girl is a 'non-english' refugee in a film where 'non-english' refugees are all being locked up, which is why the white people are fretting about her. she talks a fair bit in the film.

As I remember the ending of the book was k-rub and the film will have its work cut out to make it less so.

haha, me too! that's the first thing i thought when i saw the trailer.

i think i've read it too but it's v hazy as it was around the time it came out (93?), i think we were on holiday and i ran out of my own reading material and started on my parents'. i do remember loving it, but i always love bleak dystopic stuff set in the future so that means nothing. in the time out interview cuaron says he wanted it to feel like it is/could be happening now, so maybe they added some race/refugee stuff in there...

so, a bit of a mixed bag overall. i think this was the first pd james novel that i didn't read, so i have no idea how it compared to the book - was that similarly lame towards the end?

oh dear, am i praising a load of sigur ros now? even the soundtrack went downhill in the 2nd half, loads of john tavener nonsense, i think.

It WAS supposed to be happening now, or at least as close to now as makes it relevant (ie 2010 or something). I remember there being references to Neighbours and so forth that doubtless won't get anywhere near the film.

I never want to see films, but I rather want to see this one. Can't do any time this week, though - I might go and see it in Streatham on Saturday if it's still playing.

Hah, that's exactly the same reason I read it too.

Yes, it would have been about '93 at the latest, because it was when I was on holiday with my parents in Kent, and '93 or '94 was the last year that we did that.

there are one or two scenes where the acting's a bit cheesy but it kind of worked as a foil for all the unrelenting grimness, i am not let down.

we went to barbican in the end so the sound was wicked.

i will not spoilerise, so if you haven't seen it's safe to keep reading.

it's creepy as hell how cuaron's depiction of london in 2027 is pretty much exactly how my own head pictures it (and plenty of other people i'm sure) - advancements technologically but used for regression of society (eg the bloodyfuckingirritating advertising screens we have in buses now are used for urging people to "DOB YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILIES IN FOR BEING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS", there are security checkpoints on the tube - "you are now entering zone 2" - guards with kickass guns and "please present your ID cards" (ho ho except not really), even bigger gaps between the rich and the poor - that scene in battersea power station is nuts. all that "jobs for the brits" stuff was well scary and made me think of the usa now. the montage of all the countries that had given up while "britain soldiers on" summed up the desperation of "soldiering on" - i mean bloody hell, what FOR? lots of really nice touches like the evening standard boards (if you keep an eye out for the details in this film you'll be well rewarded, i'm sure there was loads of stuff i missed but still), some that'll work for everyone, some that were personal - like this grubby little bridge they cross at one point is one i have crossed lots and lots of times. i loved how they did the music in jasper's house too. i was in bleak mood even when i went in, this didn't help (or helped immensely, depending on how you look at it), i left the cinema shaking, LOVED it start to finish and the human race can go fuck itself hurrah.

um i haven't completely processed it yet, i def want to see it again, perhaps not too soon, it was kind of hard going. in a good way.

"Emotionally draining" is the best I can sum it up with.

Sound engineering is spot-on, too, as is the no-holds-barred approach to the violence.

yeah it's a reference to the cover of pink floyd's animals LP.

http://www.thebestofwebsite.com/Photos/Music/Pink_Floyd/Animals.jpg

the reason it's such a good reference (and therefore not really a joke, as such) is that it's something you can actually imagine happening soon in the version of britain which may have immediately preceded the police state in the film, i.e. britain as it is now. it's not even a stretch to imagine it happening.

my expectations were not particularly high for this (and madchen, the trailer makes it seem like it's going to be a much worse film than it actually is) but i thought it was absolutely brilliant. packed with great moments and scenes: the kitten crawling up clive owen's trousers, him walking around in flip flops because he's left without his shoes; the scene where the five main characters in the film get ambushed after having their path blocked by a burning car; the battersea power station scene just mentioned with the young guy and his ADDish addiction to some transparent version of the internet). There are things which seem like small ideas but which actually make the whole mess seem entirely feasible: the fact that Julianne Moore offers Clive Owen £5,000, which seems a paltry amount of money for something set in the future until we see him stooping to pick up pennies from the street a few scenes later. it's a very clever touch in a very intelligent film. it's also quite thrilling to see something of this scale which is not set in america.

Haha one of the two errors noted on IMDB is that they get into the wrong kind of fictional bus!

Me and Emsk both thought/hoped the geordie terrorist was going to be Jake from Doctor Who! But it was someone else off Byker Grove instead.

It was just all too realistic, and that was what made it terrifying. (Ha ha, there was a review in Country Life that said that the London of the film was jarringly unlike real London - bloody hell, what London do you live in? Probably the posh parklike behind the gates at Admiralty Arch.) It seemed so terrifyingly... normal.

I liked the fact that the infertility was relatively unexplained, that was what kind of made it different than The Handmaid's Tale. It just... happened, and humanity was left to deal with it. Though I would have liked to see more about how the resulting gender conflict would actually have been resolved. With the genders relieved of the ability for procreation, would the balance of power changed? Would the world have stumbled towards equality (probably not, in such a dystopia) or would one gender have risen up and attempted to destroy the other? That would have been as interesting to me as the class war and "Fugee" conflicts.

I thought the Christian symbolism was a bit heavy-handed, though. (I mean, christ, the revelation in a sodding stable? Why not throw in a manger, while you're at it. And did every woman on the side of good have to be called a variant of Mary? It would have been too obvious to make the pregnant girl a Mary, I suppose.) Surprised you didn't catch that, Emsk.

But all in all, very good. Very thought-provoking, a film you really come out of feeling dazed and terrified, and you see London not quite the same way afterwards. "Britain Soliders On" - terrifying, but at least the idea that our Island/Blitz mentality would keep us soldiering on.

yes! and the fact that the details of the horrible catastrophes of the recent past that left the world in the state it's in are very vague and suggested (did i imagine an image of an a-bomb going off somewhere in the film, on the tv news?) is very effective too - maybe there was no great huge calamity? maybe this is just the direction we are currently leading towards?

OTM

oh, was it a stable? i just thought it was a derelict building.

Why not throw in a manger, while you're at it. And did every woman on the side of good have to be called a variant of Mary? It would have been too obvious to make the pregnant girl a Mary, I suppose.) Surprised you didn't catch that, Emsk.

ki?

I don't get this, you seem to be saying that a truce of fucking is the only thing holding back the Council of Men and Council Of Women from outright war? That's a pretty literal interpretation of the battle of the sexes, I think (also it implies a lack of hope, which by definition anyone who hasn't taken their Quietus has some of).

And did every woman on the side of good have to be called a variant of Mary?

But.. they aren't. Kee isn't, and Julian isn't, and Miriam and Marichka are quite obscure variants, I think you're reading more into this than there is.

"Britain Soliders On" - terrifying, but at least the idea that our Island/Blitz mentality would keep us soldiering on.

Well yeah, this seems to sit in an awkward and interesting way with her Tory nature. On the one hand clearly Clamping Down on Immigration works, and the story isn't kind to people opposed to same, but the film, possibly just by having an person you can empathise with playing Kee, seems to run against it. People who've read the book, what's it like?

OK, a milking shed, not a stable, but still. It was a very overt nativity reference.

You don't have to be Christian to realise why it's a good idea to have a cease-fire around the first baby in 18 years.

The problem with Christians is that they don't believe that Athiests can feel awe at things.

x-post

!

I also loved this movie for all the reasons stated above, but it must be said that this is some of the best actual nuts-and-bolts filmmaking I have seen in a long time. Some incredibly memorable images - the explosions going off in the distance through the fog as Theo and Ki sit in the rowboat were so haunting. And this should be the number one film cited in any defense of CGI work, which I usually hate with a passion.

was it that cheesy though? there were cheesier bits. i dunno, i didn't leave with much of a feeling of hope, even once she'd been picked up. who are these human project people? they might be just as bad as the fish. or they might just be useless.

It had me in tears in points. I know I don't see films as often as other people, so they tend to affect me more.

i dunno if it's anything to do with seeing less films... i see quite a lot and i was in tears pretty much the whole way through! i think it's just that it's an incredibly well-made, timely, insightful, powerful film that chimes with modern fears and is realistic enough to upset us in a non-escapist way.

xpost - soldiers be following orders.

also it's not been said yet how totally hott Owen is in this.

Err, yeah. I didn't want to be the one to mention it, though. I was watching the whole film going "err, is it me, or is Clive Owen really hott in this? Coz I didn't think he was all that in King Arthur, but errr, hottt."

x-post yes, I laughed out loud at the Banksy in the Tate. (And it was the Tate for that sequence, weirdly, even though the outside was Battersea Power Station.)

(xposted to fuckery :)

xpost kate - the soldiers were just fighting to suppress the fishes; the fishes had blasted into bexhill to get the baby in order to lend mystical authority to the anti-government/pro-immigrant uprising they wanted to trigger; it turned out that the blast triggered the uprising, which i'm not sure they were counting on... anyway i think the only people "fighting" over the baby were the fishes?

xp

"i just [pops pill] don't think about it"

http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/images9/children_of_men_poster.jpg

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000J4P9YO.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V34326216_.jpg

I'd say so -- along with the rest of that sequence.

But the movie did not need another half hour.

pity I don't know who you are, farrell (most folx only get interesting when they talk shite about oneself).

As someone who doesn't like Julianne Moore's work that much, this film used her exceptionally well!

Will probably go see this next week. Oscar noms for this then?

Best bet is technical awards like cinematography and art direction. Maybe adapted screenplay -- but I doubt it'll get anything more major than that.

OTM.

Ditto on jaymc -- Lubezki's cinematography seems certain (he was nom'd for New World which died at the box office) and maybe editing as well as adapted screenplay, i.e. nothing the general public cares about. Universal is generally thought to be dumping it in the US, though it's opened well in 16 theaters so far.

Jesus

Plus I can't seem to watch TV without seeing an advert for it.

http://the-numbers.com/charts/thisweek.php

See it for Lubezki alone. Caine's good, Owen's good, Chiwetel Ejiofor's good ('Dirty Pretty Things'), Claire-Hope Ashitey's good, hell, even Julianne Moore, who I often don't much like, was good and Cuarón is an elegant story teller. He doesn't lay it on too thick, and doesn't assume you're an idiot but keeps the pace (mostly) rolling along quite smoothly.

Also syncs with America's current free-floating anxiety caused by foreign turmoil.

Yes, but only if it's as secretly dumb as The Matrix.

I saw that critics in the U.S. were not too fond of the fact that nobody explains why women stopped having children, or what exactly the Human Project was, which both seem ridiculous.

I always figured it would be difficult to find a large American audience because it's so downbeat. It's a nightmare sprint through hell, really, and hardly contains the kind of cathartic action-adventure popcorn elements of a Mission: Impossible III.

Brilliant filmmaking is, unfortunately, not a selling point in most markets.

With regard to the film itself, I plan on writing more later, but for now, i'll just say that it is easily the best film i've seen in a megaplex in years.

Both Clive Owen and Michael Caine have this supreme EASE with whatever they're doing on screen, it's kind of terrifying. And God, SO FUCKING HARROWING.

Second thoughts: Well, yes, there are certain flaws.

Resolution: Grafts everything I liked about War of the Worlds (panic, confusion, brutality, relentlessness) with practically everything I liked about Titanic (same as above, only with unapologetic sentimentality), and it's a goddamned miracle that something of that sort could be so widely and rightly beloved.

My worst fears about it (i.e. the cinematography being so ostentatious that it grabs you by the lapels and shouts "I. AM. CINEMALANGUAGE.") were wiped away once I'd realized one shot had been going on for five, six minutes without my knowing it. Which certainly puts it above the one epic shot in The Black Dahlia.

(all of 2006, too)

Which certainly puts it above the one epic shot in The Black Dahlia.

I just saw this last night and it's so fucking terrible (the movie, not the shot) that children of men seemed like citizen kane in comparison.

only 20 minutes take place in london!

Two days later I'm also wondering if Clive Owen's going barefoot or sandal-clad is an allusion to Die Hard (Owen's feet are more attractive than Willis', though).

the long tracking shots are unreal. the action sequences are great because, while they owe a slight debt to Saving Private Ryan, they aren't indulgent; they aren't Michael Bay'd to death.

The only thing I didn't like was the ending. But it's one of the better movies I've seen in a long, long time.

yeah, i don't think this was a showoffy film at all, by contemporary standards.

Why was Julianne Moore so clean while everyone else was so grubby?

the "Ruby Tuesday" cover was nowhere as cloddish as TOMORROW, tho.

I'm eager to see it again.

As for glamour, her teeth weren't capped.

I mean, it's a (mostly) non-cheeseball metaphor about the endurance/function of hope in a seemingly hopeless world. And that's an incredible feat in itself. And I don't know that I've ever seen a movie that depicted the horrors of war as being so emotionally horrible. So desperately sad and gut-wrenchingly brutal at the same time. The movie basically seems to argue that modern life is a collective failure of imagination, compassion and humanity.

And I think that's why it's being "dumped" in the U.S. It's a withering indictment of American foreign policy (check the Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo scene at the entrance to the 'fugee camp), and it ultimately asks you to sympathize with terrorists. Or terrorists-by-association, at least. It's everything V for Vendetta promised and failed to deliver. Subversive, brave, smart and furiously engaged.

Best movie I've seen in the theater in ages.

This may be changing -- full page ads running in NY papers, and it was #3 ($10.3 million) this weekend in going wide. The critics may have rescued this one, but we'll see if it has legs.

That's nice to hear.

That said, there wasn't a single empty seat in the house when I saw it on Friday night.

this superbly crafted action thriller is being treated like a communicable disease.

Ever sensitive to buzz, critics have gotten the message and are steering clear. When the New York Film Critics Circle met last week, Children of Men got only a handful of votes, mainly for Emmanuel Lubezki's sensational cinematography. Earlier this month, The New York Times imagined Academy members in surgical scrubs, with a "news analysis" noting the unusual goriness of the year's Oscar contenders: The Departed, Flags of Our Fathers, Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, and The Last King of Scotland. A more resonant and gripping movie than any of these, Children of Men wasn't even mentioned.

I did think that she'd never looked better than in the scene in the newspaper hut. Moore should walk around with a big halogen light next to her all the time.

Dreamgirls is not part of the particular equation being addressed there (melisma is the musical equivalent of gore).

saw this on Friday, if it counts as a 2006 movie it was my favorite movie of 2006

At various times in the first third of the movie, mention is made of a upsurgence of people joining radical end-of-the-world Christian organizations in response to mankind's infertility; I think it is safe to extrapolate that there would be a coincedent upsurgence of people joining other religions, Christian or otherwise. The two soldiers who drop to their knees and cross themselves strike me as a confirmation of this assumption.

One of the things I loved was how unobtrosive the long uncut scenes were. They weren't showy so they managed to bring a sense of immediacy and naturalness to the film. I was increasingly drawn into this film. It was so physical and the narrative was a simple alegory, but the details were beautiful.

2 things:

1. anyone care to speculate on cuaron's preoccupation w/ feet?
2. "marichka" (pronounced, best i can remember, as "marika") = america? or is that a stretch?

I wonder how Bunuel would have answered this.

Pay attention to the animals from start to finish. Cows, dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, etc. The movie is so full of domestic animals it might as well be Ukranian.

They humanize the film, keeping your attention focused on the small, the fragile, the protectable and unprotected. Like the baby, they draw the line between ... not good and evil, really, but between life and anti-life.

I guess a pet explosion is inevitable in an infertile world (why the FDA just approved a weight-loss drug for dogs in our world, I'm not sure).

The three-years-ongoing war of Seattle is also mentioned at some point. The idea isn't that America is "gone", but rather that it's no longer a functioning semi-first-world nation.

i have drawn the line between reading your posts and ignoring them.

xp

Is there more than the shot of Clive Owen trying on the flip-flops?

I think yr. not alone in that. Not sure why you felt compelled to point the fact out to me. Thanks anyway.

Yes and it's killing me trying to remember who it was.

Also, I completely forget, but was the issue of the baby in the picture of Theo & whatever JM's character's name was ever adressed again? Was that picture more than 18 years old/was that baby born AFTER "baby Diego"?

yes, by michael caine and at the end when Kee names the baby dylan!

TONS. there's the one of the bottom of owen's feet as he's reclining on strawberry cough, some shots of him walking through the puddles in london, him going out into the mud in his socks at the revolutionaries' hideaway, a handful where he's soaking his feet after various ordeals, the one where he cuts his foot on something sharp after bricking syd between the door, plus polish dude gives him shoes near the end. there's some sort of footwear/preparedness parallel happening here.

also, re: the animals, i just kind of assumed it was what morbs said: their presence the natural byproduct of barren humans' need to parent. i suppose if you wanted to get super-allegorical you could make some sort of noah parallel too, what with the rowboat and that, but that'd be a little much. i did sort of assume that the animals were drawn to theo caused they sensed his paternal past though.

totally need to see this again!

Occurs to me that in making the pregnant woman & baby (Dylan, eventually) unique on earth and thus the hope for all of humanity, the film forces us to look at the world through a parent's eyes. It's basically a movie about having kids in a horribly inhospitable world.

Even as childless viewers, we see man's inhumanity to man as sickeningly absurd, insane folly with astronomical stakes. This where most war and action movies, even the most high-minded ones, tend to trivialize death and suffering by making them seem like a necessary product of something else.

Again, I think this is one of the reasons the film includes so much animal footage. It's easy to feel parental/sentimental about cute animals. By inducing this kind of parental anxiety in the viewer, the film adds weight to the threats and condemnations of its final act.

Walking baby Bazooka out of the the tenement still makes me tear up. There are very few films with the sense of decency and humanity on display here.

Thought the cars were absolutely spot-on. Twenty years from now there'll be the same Renault Megane, Suzuki Swift and a fucking Toyota Corolla, but with rubber crap and sensors and the front and useless little warnings telling you an "impact" is imminent that flash up on the windscreen.

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Ss/0206634/D001_00234.jpg

arguments upthread about the religious symbolism seem bunk for the most part, though the more i chew on it the more they might be true, at least a *little* bit (this isn't frickin 'stephen king's the stand' by any means which i watched on sci-fi channel last night thinking it was a bio-disaster film until i realized it was basically a 'left behind' movie) when i read on imdb where the title comes from:

"Lord, thou hast been our refuge: from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: thou art God from everlasting, and world without end. Thou turnest man to destruction: again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday: Seeing that is past as a watch in the night."

speaking of dystopic-apocalypto films, has anyone read this book? i really want to check it out -- hopefully a library near me has it -- a bit out of my range just now:
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Apocalyptic-Cinema-Charles-Mitchell/dp/0313315272

can't see these as clearly but one of the things i really look forward to in re-watchin it is absorbing the details better:

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Ss/0206634/00189.jpg_rgb.jpg

It's certainly worth the Amazon used book price.

That has made me less excited to see a movie that I was looking forward too.

And damm it now I want to go and listen to Itchy Woooooooo all afternoon.

this is a good point. I had a child six months ago and that's partly why this movie was so affecting to me, absolutely. Also, the birth scene in this is terrifyingly realistic and I can't figure out how they did it. cgi?

I AM ABOUT TO TYPE A SPOILER RIGHT NOW ALERT MESSAGE!!!!!

so what's the deal, they get the girl's baby to safety, so "the plan" for redeveloping the population then is to bottleneck the entire human species through it? wouldn't that ultimately mung-ify us all? better than nothing, is that what we're supposed to accept?

You know who was great? Peter Mullan as Syd, the Bexhill guard.

so what's the deal, they get the girl's baby to safety, so "the plan" for redeveloping the population then is to bottleneck the entire human species through it? wouldn't that ultimately mung-ify us all? better than nothing, is that what we're supposed to accept?

We know nothing about "the plan" other than, you know, the first child in 18 years has been born and maybe that would be a good place to poke around for a solution. Anything beyond that is stuff you're making up in your own mind.

I think it speaks well for Children of Men that nearly every major criticism I've read is due to either misunderstanding or imposing unnecessary conditions from the outside.

Totally didn't notice that that was Peter Mullan, which increases my regard for him.

Yeah, it was the oposite of this.

It's worth noting that we don't even know that this is the first child in 18 years... it's never made clear exactly what the human project is, and I sort of thought that there might be more than just one mother and baby.

cat clawing onto clive owen's leg = AWESOMENESS

If there's one thing I'd criticize about this otherwise wonderful movie, it's that the kitten was criminally underutilized.

p.s., the sci-fi parody linked to by Fluffy Bear etc upthread really is very funny.

when they were smoking w33d the first time and telling jokes about scientists munching stork.

but yeah, an amazing, film. "emotionally draining" is otfm.

A big thing this movie accomplished for me, and what I think it accomplishes for probably just about everyone who sees it, is the feeling of what War is Really Like. Never knowing peace, always being on the move, life being very very cheap, having crowds and movements and passionately violent people always around the next corner saying some stuff you agree with, a lot of stuff you don't, and you not really knowing how to handle it, not feeling equipped to deal. It's what people in Iraq live with every day but I can't think of an article or television report which has made me feel it the way that this movie did.

Today it came to me. In the New Testament, Romans 15:10, I believe (might be 10:15 - it's been a long time since Bible college), says, in part, "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace."

It just seems appropo, somehow.

He washes Theo's feet and dies for him the next day. There are probably more (maybe not).

There's a line about them being a collective of scientists working on the infertility problem, right? I thought that was enough. Obviously they're the ones to get this miracle woman to, for study.

I didn't have a clear answer when my friend asked me afterwards why they didn't let the government know. Just because she's an immigrant? Surely the government would value a baby more than they would hate an immigrant, right? Since the hatred of immigrants stemmed from a loss of hope, at least indirectly, and this baby would be hope, and Britain would have something suddenly that no other country did. Right? That's a great deal of hand to have.

I dunno. Apparently not.

A lot of the "but this wasn't explained" questions seem a little weird to me, especially when it comes to the stuff that totally was explained: e.g., going to the government is precisely what Owen is suggesting in the kitten-claws bit! To which everyone responds that they'll take away the baby and deport Ki, which she and Miriam are against for obvious moral/personal reasons, and the Fish are pushing because of their own baby-having agenda.

When this ended and the title flashed back up, someone behind me snorted derisively, and then, when the title gave way to credits, two other people snorted exactly the same way. I'm a tad mystified by this: it's laid out pretty clearly that the scope of the thing is "we must get her to the boat," so ... what, were they hoping for an extra fifteen minutes of montage where it's all like "hooray, we have sorted out the baby problem, and everything is going back to normal now?"

P.P.S.: As far as Christian overtones go, I feel like this was fairly light on them, considering how much the scenario jumps up and down screaming "hello I am totally wide open for as much Christian-overtone pushing as you could possibly want to do" (and considering the director was born / raised / educated in Mexico, where surely Virgin Mary-tales are going to loom large in your experience and imagination no matter where you wind up in terms of religion).

I didn't have a clear answer when my friend asked me afterwards why they didn't let the government know. Just because she's an immigrant?

Yeah, I think it was pretty clear that both baby and mother would get the E.T. treatment.

Another one of the million things I liked about this film was the idea that, like in Day of the Triffids, there was the feeling that this was just one of many stories, and that there were other people also trying to get pregnant women, or possibly pregnant women, to the Human Project.

There's also a little mean bit of me that likes to think that the Human Project is just as bad and will also give them the E.T. treatment. Because I like bleak films.

I missed that line of dialogue. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, then.

*Okay, so I somehow missed the Julian/Theo dialogue on the bus about Dylan 1.0. This was a very well-played, heartbreaking moment, that was really integral to understanding a lot of what was to come (in particular, why she came to him in the first place).

*The musical score, I realized this time, was very integrated - all the incidental music was mixed as to actually seem part of the events of the film, only once really did a piece of music stand out as not originating from someplace on-screen ("Court of the Crimson King", which they may have been listening to on Big Important Guy's car stereo). Every other piece of music came from SOMEWHERE - Jasper's home stereo, various car stereos, drums and other music panned hard right or left as though it was being performed on the street just off-screen. Really added to the immersiveness (is this even a real word?) of the film.

There's at least one more minutes long single-shot to the ambush and the Bexhill shot I hadn't caught on to the first time - that amazing barefoot jump-start escape from the Fishes' compound.

Well, granted, one of the many things the film leaves outside its scope is why, precisely, the government would be more committed to its deportation system than to fertility -- it's a little bit handwavy on that front. But even leaving aside deportation, it seems completely reasonable to assume they wouldn't just leave the first live birth in years to be raised by one of the refugees they've put so much energy into demonizing. And for Miriam, Ki, and Theo, at least, the idea of the government taking the baby and packing Ki off to a lab somewhere is just as problematic.

It also seems entirely possible that the Fish have just successfully scared everyone off putting any trust in the government, as their own agenda dictates, which seems like the kind of thing that might be laid out in more detail in novel form?

In any case, the amount of stuff that goes unexamined in this is definitely okay with me -- probably a good thing -- because we're kept so tightly in the immediate experience and concerns of the story. (In a case like this, there's not even much reason to think the characters can divine the government's motivations any more than we can.) And the story itself seems entirely coherent. The fact that there are things we don't entirely understand about the outside world -- things that seem like rumors and headlines that float momentarily by -- seems fairly appropriate to the setting, right?

I love the bit where the Fish deny involvement in the bombing from the beginning of the film, blaming the government, but as you learn more about them it becomes clear that it could have just as easily been them.

I was wondering if the initial infertility was caused by a genetically-engineered virus that targeted immigrants/third world that misfired and targeted everyone. Something similar to what took place in Frank Herbert's The White Plague.

This was a bit obtrusive to me, too. It seemed very out of character for either the driver or Theo to play loud music on the drive.

I hope that the Final Cut of Blade Runner gets rid of the explanatory text at the beginning, the same way the Director's Cut got rid of the voiceover.

the large amount of unexplained stuff is one of the movie's strongest points. thank GOD they didn't explain the infertility thing with some dumb gov't-weapons-project-gone-wrong thing.

will this depress me?

b/c the state of the world is pretty depressing lately
and i'm not even really a depressive person. i don't want all flowers and sunshine and lalala by any means, but i do want, er, hope, or something. (i love 'bladerunner,' i love 'aliens', if that matters in answering)

it's really really excellent.

"The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

It's the kind of misspeaking that even GW couldn't pull off. Obviously he meant that police preserve ORDER, but this drooling moron couldn't wrap his tiny brain around even a single twist in the English language. All he knew was corruption and strong-arming, and during the '68 Convention in Chicago that he presided over, he proved not only that he was a moron, but that his police force was as moronic as he was. Not by choice, necessarily. Just following orders. Things get out of hand? Whoop 'em. There are pictures of streets (that I've lived on) after the 68 convention, and they don't look a lot different from some streets in this movie. Trash and crap and various detrius lining both sides of the street, with the middle path clear. In the movie, the implication (I guess) was that people walk there all the time. In the photos, it was more likely because of liberal use of firehoses. Hm. What's the difference?

Anyway.

So for anyone who thinks this movie is in any way implausible...

As far as plausible real-world resemblances, there was actually a total of maybe ten seconds where it seemed a bit too much -- I appreciated how everything was visually modeled on real events and presumably news footage, but there were a couple details that leaped past that and become so much the news footage that they broke the spell. E.g., the refugees marching and chanting "Allahu akbar" = totally right and vivid. The fact that they're carrying a body on a plank in Palestinian martyr style = too recognizable, as an image, to keep me in the film's world, as opposed to thinking about the real one.

That's obviously a minor point, and I guess -- to be inconsistent -- I didn't really mind the pointed placement of the Abu Ghraib hooded man in the entrance, which the same sort of real-world spell-breaking. I guess it's just the difference between feeling like those things ring true in the world of the film and actually being reminded of the world outside the theater? Which this film was 99% totally on the right side of: the fact that the tanks at the end could remind you of Beirut or Groszny or the West Bank or nearly wherever is a good example of it working seamlessly.

I mean, I think it says a lot that you walk out of this thinking about the world of the film, and not thinking (just for example) "yeah, the situation of the refugees is clearly analogous to the situation of Palestinians," or anything remotely along those lines, even though it would be fairly easy to do.

(P.S. One of the many ways in which the not-knowing-details is fascinating: it's totally unclear what the refugee/deportation policy is, to the point where I kept wondering if Julianne Moore was with the Fish in part because she was American!)

roffle

(P.S. One of the many ways in which the not-knowing-details is fascinating: it's totally unclear what the refugee/deportation policy is, to the point where I kept wondering if Julianne Moore was with the Fish in part because she was American!)

I thought that was blatantly why she was with them (in addition to the character's personality and personal history)! They were exporting Germans left and right, why wouldn't they export Americans?

(My favorite early moment in the movie is the German woman complaining about being locked up with the big black man.)

$#@#$$! Thanks, Fandango.

As you were. I'll read this thread through when I finally see the damn thing.

Funny. I don't think yr. wrong, but I saw the film very differently. I thought it was a movie about having children. Period.

It's backdropped by a dystopian vision of present day society, to up the ante on the dread and sense of hopelessness that we all sometimes feel about the future. This hell is what our children are (or will be) born into. What hope we have in our future, in their future, can seem absurd, even futile. Violent folly threatens to overwhelm and destroy us at every turn. Try as we might, we can't ever forget that death waits around the corner -- that death will win in the end.

"The Human Project" is simply what we're all engaged in: life. Especially when we choose to have kids.

"Tomorrow" (the illusory ship that's supposed to lead to something better) never really arrives. So, we sit here, adrift, alone, caring for what little we can build in the way of a family, and we wait. We know that tomorrow will never really arrive, but what else can we do?

Yes.

The movie is about the things people do to each other when they lose hope in their future. The baby thing is a cheap sci-fi plot device that doesn't really matter.

I think that's half right. The movie is about human behavior sans hope, but infertility is more than just a device in this movie. The baby and the mother are holy (or something akin to holy), and that's not just a half-thought out Jesus/Mary reference, it's an intentional parallel, but with one essential difference: in the Christian tale, hope is in the form of a bridge to God, but in Children of Men, hope is in the form of a literal bridge to the future. It is a materialistic, humanist nativity story, elevating the propagation of the species to something almost religious.

Apparently the book has a lot more God stuff in it, and the adaptation is very loose.

I'd flop the fore/background Beales finds -- Did anyone else find the film being overwhelmingly about today much more than Brazil was about 1985 or Blade Runner about 1982? 'cuz I was not thinking about "the world of the film" much afterward, but about Iraq, terror in all its forms, all the missing uranium from the USSR, etc.

s1ocki, the sledgehammer impact of TOMORROW on the audience trumps the plausibility that activists would give the ship that name; it's too much.

Last Sunday's NY Times had an analysis of the visit to Cousin Nigel (the art hoarder) scene, and Manohla Dargis keeps referring to the young guy with the wired hand and scar, Alex, as "the third man" at the table. Is there a specific ref anywhere to him being Nigel's son?

the tone that persists for the first few scenes after that first explosion really impressed me. i almost wish julianne moore didn't bring it up.

Which is why it's a better film than either.

"I was not thinking about 'he world of the film'much afterward, but about Iraq, terror in all its forms, all the missing uranium from the USSR, etc."
- Morbius

Exactly. That's exactly what I was trying to say, but clarified.

Harold & Kumar

Return of the King is about today? Van Wilder 2?

We can get into pissing contests about anything, it's in the Mission Statement.

There was. As someone who's starting to deal with hearing loss issues, I was thinking "oh fuck, Clive, I feel ya, man."

The Passion is about the suffering of the Son of Man, and how essential that suffering was as a part of a permanent sacrifice on the part of God. Children of Men is about the suffering of Man, and therefore redemption is found not in sacrificing the child of the nativity but in sacrificing oneself so that child may live.

Let's not go fucking with the classics. I don't remember 1982 OR 1985 very well, but it seems that both of those movies do an amazing job of retrofitting the future (if you will). Maybe that's for another thread.

Ditto.

I do see what you mean, in that it's a movie about having a future beyond yourself, however intangible. Having children is how most people do that. Maybe all people.

TAMARRAH, TAMARRAH, I'LL GIVE BIRTH TO YA TAMARRAH,
YOU'RE JUST A FLOATING BUOY AWAAAAAYY!!!!!

(sorry)

Yeah, I agree. What's the problem. That's exactly the sort of thing I'd expect.

But it would have been awesome if they came in this instead:

http://www.aztlan.net/oiltank.jpg

I agree with you, re: Brazil. Like CoM, Brazil is/was set in an exaggerated version of the present, enabling the film to function as fairly direct sociopolitical commentary. I think this is much less true of Blade Runner, but again, that's all kinda OT here.

http://www.aztlan.net/ricec.jpg

Jesus, I didn't say TOMORROW was implausible; it disrupts the mood of the last scene with hamfistedness. (As for the dialogue mentions, I've either forgotten them or they were drowned out by the Murmuring Couple Near Me who wouldn't shut the fuck up.)

Brazil (aka Terry Gilliam's good movie) struck me as much more repetitive last time (also more like a futuristic 1948), certainly no classic; I like Blade Runner but not cultishly.

Also, I find your assertion that all people have children somewhat suspect.

Mayyybe.

ever heard of a little film called 12 monkeys?

Yeah, it's the fact that I was looking for a ship named "Tomorrow" as described earlier in the movie that made the name just a little more mundane and therefore not as overstated as it would have been coming at me from out of the blue.

So no thoughts on Nigel shrieking "Take your pills Alex" (or what game Alex was playing)?

xpost

little is right, cutty

funny, all my favorite films are in this thread

fixed

What's to say really? Shiny happy veneer cracks momentarily on an aristocrat, reveals maggots underneath, film at 11.

The birth scene was what, 3 minutes long? Using an animatronic baby does not excuse that, and the lack of mess.

the name of the boat didn't make me cringe that way but calling the kid(s) "Dylan" sort of did

Bob will save us all!

God you're a pretentious prick.

grid wars 2

http://www.universo-nintendo.com/files/Imagenes/Grid_Wars2.jpg

Ha: so if you do a spectral analysis of the rest of the film, you think that one frequency will be stripped out?

The game being played was giving me hardcore flashbacks to playing Hyperframe. (Which, incidentally, rules.)

that would be pretty awesome.

xp - I loved the Cod/'English Fish' line.

There's a very good thread here (that I can't find at the moment) that gets into the 1982 sociology of Blade Runner (urban anxiety, white flight, fear of Asian economic immigration)

Right, right, duration and pretense being inextricably tied and all.

In another day or so I might check this out http://www.thehumanprojectlives.org/indexnew.php

But... I usually hate things like it. With the exception of those 'Lost' videos and a few peeks at the message boards for the Wire I think I've never participated in such folly.

Ohhhhh man they want me to redeem "credits" for like a photo of myself and a ticket stub? Sorry.

--couple of good joeks in unexpected places

--vibe and look kinda reminded me of 28 Days Later

--great kitten

No, fuck that, loving La Jetee over 12 Monkeys isn't wrong at all.

la jetee and 12 monkeys are not mutually exclusive, indeed it is possible to enjoy both films

Or maybe I'm just saying that 'cuz I'm pretentious and I felt the same way about it.

12 monkeys is a movie with dialogue, acting, a wonderful score

one created the idea, the other expounded on it--it's the concept of both films i love, i don't get caught up in willis, pitt, etc, and i certainly don't sit around wishing i was watching the other when watching one of them

i didn't feel initial elation/flood-of-emotions when the end title came up though, but my kind of neutral-due-to-being-shattered-by-film reaction was as honest as they come. and like most great films, it becomes better through how it leaves you and how you think about it later

--vibe and look kinda reminded me of 28 Days Later
oh totally - all the greys and blues and misty damp. the brits are great at teh dystopia. and this really was a zombie movie in many ways.

must see again.

uh, xpost x a million
i like 12 monkeys. a lot. la jetee is a moving art film that i also like. aliens is also rad.

Leaving out Caine's final scene could have improved this movie a lot of ways, for me - watching that was such a gut check that afterwards the rest of the movie was really kind of a "whatever" experience except for the March Of The Crying Infant.

the livestock roaming the warzone ghetto were pretty funny, TBH. I didn't LOL though.

so many amazing details. off the top of my head, i liked:

that being nearly killed in a bombing isn't enough to get off work or even worth mentioning, but transparently complaiing about a diana-style celebrity death is.

the ethnic balkanization of the bexhill camp (british ramallah innit)

several Xs!

xpost re rasta dude

For some unknown reason, male sperm counts have dropped to the point of sterility.[???] More amusing than compelling, like a campy episode of Lost in Space where anything goes and nothing makes sense. Oh dear! Oh dear!

In a world where...the only hope for the human race lies with a hard-bitten hero and an immaculate conception.

Another problem is that the movie doesn’t seem to have any point to it when, given its subject matter, it really feels as if it should. Timely themes of terrorism, asylum seekers and mass disillusionment are all there, but nothing’s done with them...it’s a movie that only sci-fi nerds are going to enjoy.

What happened in the intervening years? Without this knowledge these events make little or no sense.

As it turns out, the movie is set not in besieged Seattle but in England, which is besieged by peaceful immigrants because it's the last bastion of civilization. (I got this from the press notes; it's not clear from the movie why everyone wants to go to England.)[???]

actually who cares what morons would have rather seen! haha zap! take that, retards!

a. I don't particularly want to see it again.
b. I don't particularly want to talk about it to anyone who hasn't already seen it.
--> C. This is because instead of thinking about the awesome parts of this film, I am stuck pondering relatively tiresome metaphysical bullshit, because (I think!) the ending was so open-ended as to be a poorly thought out cock-up.

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), January 16th, 2007 4:20 PM. (Dr Morbius) (later)

agreed. this was one of the weaker points in the movie and it's an easy-out for a redemptive arc.

I did go see it again, and while I noticed a lot of things I hadn't before, once you know what's going to happen it's not nearly as good.

There was a text crawl at the beginning! (on the tv screen at the coffee shop)

While the unknown wound, like the naming of the child, was a little distracting and cliche, two aspects of his death were important: 1) how Kee and Theo each handled his dying, and 2) Kee left alone with the child in a little boat in the fog on the ocean.

i liked the ending in a self-frustrating way, like a john fowles novel or something. enough tenuous information is out there in the film (that the tomorrow is a hospital ship, that the ship will take them to experts on the azores) that the ship actually showing up makes all that stuff true enough. maybe the ship patches theo up, maybe they take care of kee and the baby, maybe not. but why wouldn't it all be true?

They're fucked, but they have to hope in something. Theo has one pretty decent excuse to go to the Human Project: Julian. He can trust her the way she ultimately trusted him. That seems to be one of the major points of the movie that the most elevated human ideas of love and hope and trust and empathy are personal and not political.

http://www.cswu.cz/music/characters/medals.jpg

http://www.phillyist.com/attachments/philly_nicole/mission-accomplished.jpg

Didn't get the feeling of determined completion from that ending that you did. Not at all. The ship looked like a mirage. It didn't look real, and I don't think it was supposed to look real. The men on deck were posed in way-too-obviously-cartoonish poses of "brave discovery" and didn't seem to be pointing towards the girl and baby, a scant 100 feet away. They seemed to be gesturing towards an indefinable something off on the very distant horizon. Towards "tomorrow" or something similarly abstract?

I don't think we were meant to take the final shots as literally as all that.

(That could also be used on people confused after watching Inland Empire. Actually, never mind, the Lynch rabbits and Nastasja Kinski were on the boat.)

Yeah, see, I'm definitely on the side of appreciating this. The goal is to get her to the boat, and that gets accomplished, as much as tasks are accomplished in any contemporary setting. I have not seen that movie where Bruce Willis has to guide Mos Def across fourteen blocks, or whatever, but I'm guessing that their safe arrival doesn't end criminal behavior forever, which seems analogous to what some people in my audience expected from this one: that the unpleasant future would somehow be corrected at the end?

Theo dies in part because every single person who helps them dies. (The airstrikes obviously help with that, but it seems to be underlined when the Russians get shot.) Also: I really liked Sid's death, the sense of hesitance and repulsion on Theo's part as he bashes him. I appreciate seeing a film this suspenseful where the hero doesn't engage in any more action than knocking people with car doors, jump-starting a vehicle, and then showing great distaste in finally actually having to brain someone.

Yeah, out of the heroes in the movie, who actually carries a weapon? Do we ever see Julian with a weapon? Theo uses a car door and a battery, but carries nothing. Kee: nothing. Jasper: nothing. Miriam: nothing. Merickha: carries nothing, but brandishes a piece of wood in an emergency (poor Sid brings out the worst in everybody). The only unsullied "good-guy" who carries a weapon in the movie is the Georgian(?) refugee who leads them to the boat.

-- Sick Mouthy (sickmouth...), January 17th, 2007 11:59 AM. (Nick Southall) (later)

i dunno, this seemed a little out of place to me.

The Jarvis Cocker tune just compounded the awfulness of the ending. The last two minutes is by far the worst part of the film. They should have made it half an hour longer.

Awesome movie.

I think you're being a nitpicker.

I still can't find fault with the ending. Seems like it's lose-lose for Cuaron - every possible ending would have annoyed someone.

x-post who's Rosenbaum? Is it linked here? I didn't read the entire thread.