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

*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.