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

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.

There aren't really enough many 3-year-olds making dubstep, though - Baby Diego would've grown up with a whole generation above him making music (and the ones above that, as well - more so if they're not making babies!)

Lol it's a very bad, boring piece if you know even some of the terrain.

And in fact covid has actually made capitalism seem incredibly fragile, it's end closer and possible, and the last general election and movements around the world show that people are thinking of alternatives. The New Statesman plays it's own part in demonising and talking down these movements so ofc it will write about clapped out thrash like Children of Men.

"Cuarón was inspired by the 20th-century film theorist André Bazin, for whom fast editing diminishes a scene “from something real into something imaginary”."

Like this...doesn't sound right? Bazin was writing (and died) before the really long takes became a thing later in the 60s and then 70s Euro film? And he was more for backing a kind of realism in filmmaking (from my fuzzy memory).

Lol it's a very bad, boring piece if you know even some of the terrain.

"bad, boring"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich

I heard a shocking factoid recently: an average human body today contains at least 500 chemicals that did not exist before WWII.

At this point it's hard for me to read an article like that and muster the sense of panic she is trying to evoke. The future looks bleak for humanity, but it would be poetic justice that if we wiped ourselves out before we could finish making the world uninhabitable for most other species.

This film...

London 2027 in Children of Men is a functional society - you still get a coffee, go to work on the bus, put a bet on the dogs, go to the pub - but it’s not one you’d want to live in. pic.twitter.com/3T81bCyl68

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) November 3, 2022

"Cuarón was inspired by the 20th-century film theorist André Bazin, for whom fast editing diminishes a scene “from something real into something imaginary”."

Like this...doesn't sound right? Bazin was writing (and died) before the really long takes became a thing later in the 60s and then 70s Euro film? And he was more for backing a kind of realism in filmmaking (from my fuzzy memory).

― xyzzzz__, Monday, August 3, 2020 6:05 AM (two years ago)

yeah, my fuzzy memory aligns with yours ... it would probably be more accurate to say that Cuaron was inspired by 60s/70s filmmakers whose long takes were partially a response to the theories of Bazin (e.g. the Godard traffic jam scene in Weekend)

Bazin did celebrate long takes, but he was probably thinking about "master shots" rather than the sometimes showy takes of later filmmakers. It wasn't the length of the take or the impressive camera movements that was important to him:

I would even say that Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope could just as easily have been edited in classical fashion, whatever artistic importance one may legitimately attach to his approach. On the other hand, it would be unthinkable for the famous seal-hunting scene in Nanook of the North not to show us, in the same composition, the hunter, the hole in the ice and the seal.

All the news about Manston has had me thinking about the Bexhill scenes in CoM over the last few days.

Yup

Saw this for the first time last night. I'm afraid, when everyone stops fighting as he carries the baby out of the building, I was unable to get this bit from The Day Today "War" out of my head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRjtVdWvNzY

Watched this again tonight. It's got this weird time-breaking element to it - like it's beamed in from some hidden decade between the 90s and 00s but also could have been made last year. It continues to be horribly prescient, of course. God, I watched the last twenty minutes through a cloud of tears.

1) I have been rude about Clive Owen's acting on another thread. He's fucking *perfect* in this. Role of a lifetime.
2) Owen should have been nominated for awards, and so should Michael Caine.

Watched it again last week. Agree with all the above. What a film.

I keep thinking about Pam Ferris's character. She's kind of slapstick in her way, clumsy, out of place but her monologue in the abandoned school gives her character so much dignity. I love how it's not rushed and comes pretty close to the end of the film, the monologue blooming backwards into her character and actions. Her sacrifice for Kee is so beautiful.

I don't really know what to make of the vaguely 'Eastern religious' stuff associated with her. She and Kee mumble 'om mani padme hum' in the back of the car. And is that tai-chi she's doing outside the school? Fwiw, 'shantih shantih shantih' are the final three words of the credits (could be a nod to The Waste Land; might just be a final message of peace from the Vedas).

This and AI are two big budget/big swing early '00s sci-fi that can reduce me to puddles just thinking about them. I have to be judicious with rewatches.

This and AI are two big budget/big swing early '00s sci-fi that can reduce me to puddles just thinking about them. I have to be judicious with rewatches.

Thanks, phone. This is the future we are living in.

her monologue in the abandoned school gives her character so much dignity

i randomly put on 28 Days Later and early on there's a scene shortly after Murphy's character gets out of the hospital, where a woman is telling him about the events that had occurred while he was in a coma and they did the same slow pan over to her while she spoke as that scene. feel like CoM had to have been directly inspired by 28 Days for that monologue scene.
not being a film school student, i realize there's a good chance this kind of thing has been done 1000 times before and since - but the similarities did jump out at me

And is that tai-chi she's doing outside the school?

Outside Jasper's, but yeah - I think she's drawn as "well-spoken but a bit of a hippie", which is definitely some type - when she's taken off the bus she's praying to 'the Lord' to take care of Kee - not sure how much weight to put on whether the loud exhortation to 'St Gabriel' is just acting a a distraction. She's quite well dressed when Theo first gets into the car with her - the crusty look for the rest of the film is because those clothes end up with Julian's blood on them.

Best dystopian movie

i agree. I can’t think of one that bests it.

Yeah, the coolest thing about that bit -- thematically, visually, generally -- was that the guy sits and eats lunch with Guernica hanging over the table.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 18 January 2007 22:41 (eighteen years ago) link

Absurd update to this: I was recently walking past an apartment I used to live in, and was shocked to see through the window that whoever lives there now has a gigantic print of Guernica over the dining area. Imagine my surprise reading an 18-year-old thread and seeing that I once found this deranged enough in fiction

It all comes true in the end. (Also hi there!)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/9/us-fertility-rate-drops-to-all-time-low-continuing-a-two-decade-decline

context:

‪Brooke‬
✧@brooklynma✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 6h
This is driven by a huge drop in 13-17 year olds getting knocked up with no recourse so just take that into consideration

one thing that I think the movie gets right is the absolute over the top obsession with pets/animals, nearly everyone has an emotional support animal on a plane or in the grocery store/restaurant these days.

Falling birth rates correlate with rising living standards literally everywhere in the world throughout history iirc so I'm not sure what the problem is here

You'd think so. But in the United States at least, one immediate prediction is that any number of small to moderate sized colleges and schools will not have enough enrollment and struggle to stay open. I've heard it termed the demographic cliff, as far as higher education goes. Iirc the drop in birth rate began around the 2007 financial crises and hasn't recovered, and starting around last year or so (when that peak birth-year class of 2007 began applying to colleges, in record numbers) the enrollment numbers have begun cycling down, already starting with shrinking kindergarten classes. It's (potentially) going to especially affect public education here.

I think the broader global concern is that as people live longer, there won't be enough young people to support them financially, through taxes and work. Iirc this has been a real worry in countries like Italy and Japan, places that have tried to incentivize having kids, through advertising campaigns and even through payments. Like this graf from some study I just skimmed:

The nation’s aging population has become a persistent issue that threatens to perpetually stunt their economy. Japan is currently the nation with the highest old-age dependency ratio, -a statistic that relates the number of retired people to the working age population- with a proportion of 48.6 seniors for every 100 working adults. (Keulen, 2024) Additionally, this metric is projected to increase 79/100 by 2050 (Keulen, 2024). Among economists, a diminishing population is often linked to a weakening economic growth. The economic growth slows when a population ages due to pressure on the national social security system. There is less income tax to collect from individuals as the workforce gets smaller and as the need for elderly care, health care, pensions and health care workers increases, so does the amount of necessary public funding.

There's a solution hovering in there, of course - spend less on bullshit like wars and more on families/health care/etc. - but no country seems to have figured it out yet. And any campaign to have more kids has been tainted by the right-wing nativists with their own cuckoo sexist/racists agendas.

I guess diaper manufacturers might see a dip too..

But that broader picture of "not enough workers to fund retirees" has been debunked pretty comprehensively. The main guy I think of for this is Dean Baker. The core of the argument is that even modest annual productivity gains swamp the demographic issue. But there are other positives in a declining population.

https://cepr.net/publications/aging-populations-and-great-power-politics-the-problem-is-for-the-elites-not-the-masses/

one immediate prediction is that any number of small to moderate sized colleges

…an “immediate” prediction is that there will be no other changes to the US economy, population, demographics, government or social structure, such that the raw numbers of births 18 years earlier will be a notable peril for university operations?