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

OK, watched this with my older kid. Hadn't seen it in at least a decade, still holds up, still a masterpiece, even more trenchant than before. Case in point: my daughter, during the fighting scenes at the end, asked "do you think this is what it's like in Syria?" And I said ... yeah, probably something just like this.

Clive Owen is a tough actor to get a bead on. Sort of minor dude, breaks out belatedly with "Croupier," ebbs and flows in and out of the spotlight despite being handsome and charismatic and talented. I guess he's in the new Ang Lee movie, which is ... who knows. Especially with Will Smith starring.

this and The Knick are career highlights

A long time ago, Clive Owen came to buy trousers in a shop I worked in and I was too star-struck to serve him.

Daniel Craig also came in but didn't buy anything, although I did wish I'd asked him "What fettle, Geordie?"

and that he's answered "Canny fettle" and then we were married.

Saw this as a free screening at Glasgow Film Festival yesterday morning. I must have watched it 3 or 4 times at home over the years, but this was the first time I'd seen it in the cinema and, though the 35mm print was pretty rough, it was still great to have that extra scale and I loved it as much as ever. Knowing the foreground story so well, it was especially nice to be able to appreciate how much attention to detail there is in the background and around the edges of the action.

j.'s intuition that Agamben may be relevant here is on point but perhaps even more so Esposito, who I remember has written some things about pregnancy (or the relationship between mother and fetus) as modeling a more positive framework for biopolitics. (I'd need to track down the specifics of that though...and I wouldn't be surprised if it was "problematic," as they say.)

― ryan, Thursday, July 12, 2018 9:59 PM (one year ago

haven't looked this up yet but—wouldn't be surprised to see a lotta arendt / natality stuff in there?

I think about this movie all the fucking time as horrible shit sweeps the planet like coronavirus. need to rewatch it.

I think I’ve seen it six or seven times now.

Krakow, there’s one scene when he’s on the bus passing through security and the famous image of the hooded man from Abu grhaib is being played out in the background.

Barely even the background, iirc!

Yep, the arrival at Bexhill is a harrowing scene, but not overdone I don't think.

I was noticing this time how well Theo's (functioning) alcohol problem is portrayed. It's never mentioned out loud, but is always right there, from the opening moments stopping to top up his coffee with whisky on the street through his continual furtive sips to finally sterilising his hands with same said whisky before the delivery of the baby. A couple of other moments... when he meets Luke in the pub to pass on the transit papers he ends up with three full pints in front of him and immediately before at the Ark of the Arts with his cousin Nigel there's a whole collection of bottles on the table in front of Theo and he makes sure to take his wine with him when they move to chat at the window. Small things, but I thought they all subtly added up to add authenticity to that part of his character.

There's an element of "why bother?" that courses through his character. That's a trait you see in lots of movies, in lots of anti-heroes, but in this one obviously the scenario is such that in a sense such an attitude is at least somewhat justified. He just wants to drink, go about his business and wait to die like everyone else. He's kind of a microcosm of society's collective rock bottom. But unlike a lot of those aforementioned anti-hero characters, we learn he was not always this cynical and broken, we learn how he became this way, which supports his shift to full hero once he gets a glimmer of hope.

Yeah, absolutely. This amazing scene comes immediately to mind in that regard. I love how this is shot with Clive Owen silently breaking down in the foreground as the blurred out conversations happens in the other half of the frame...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS8Ho_gZ6RQ

I fancy Clive Owen.

Not somewhat justified, absolutely justified. And yeah as a mainly straight dude Owen is hawt.

i rewatched this last night with friends and we kept talking about owen being hot

also i hadn't seen it in about a decade and what a film. although i did notice how many times owen walked into a room and a character started monologuing at him, like a video game

I only said 'somewhat' justified because this is a world where millions and millions of people have experienced similar tragedies. But yeah, that scene is killer.

I know we've talked about it, but it's hard to believe this movie more or less got ignored. Or for all I know mostly has stayed generally overlooked. It's kind of like the ... Elliott Smith of movies? Sad, tragic, often perfect, but dealt a bad hand by fate. Had to be reminded that "The Departed" won best picture that year (fwiw), but I imagine if the same slate of 2006 films were in play this year, this would have had a better chance of getting nominated, let alone winning. This or "Pan's Labyrinth," perhaps. Though of course both Cuaron and Del Toro got theirs soon enough.

the fact that just about everyone who's seen this film watches it multiple times makes that even weirder.

i used it in a course and quite a few students (so people who were kids when it came out) had seen it before, while also feeling like it overlooked

*was

I saw this in the theatre with a friend at his suggestion shortly after it opened. Went in cold, knowing absolutely nothing about it (which is generally my favourite way to see something), and judging by the title, expected some kind of period drama along the lines of "Bridges of Madison County." To instead get this was one of the best movie experiences I've had. I still have the ticket stub.

very similar experience here.

judging by the title, expected some kind of period drama along the lines of "Bridges of Madison County."

well, they're both horror films

And both based on fairly crap books
(yet the film version of Children of Men is indeed brilliant)

how do you all feel about - the ping pong ball bit?

think it’s the best

yeah its one of the best scenes

The levity certainly sets you up hard for the sucker punch.

It certainly does put pressure on the wound.

Apparently it took 8 days to film that sequence.

i believe it

There’s a doc about it on the blu ray. Prob also on YouTube. They had to build a crazy car rig.

8 days seems low!

I need to rewatch this soon.

I'm sure the video goes into that elaborate car rig they designed.

They only had that piece of road for 8 days, so iirc they spent a week rehearsing, then had time for three takes.

hesitate to post this because it mentions so many critic/theorist/historian names that i assume it's going to piss off everyone, but i enjoyed ("enjoyed") this piece

https://www.newstatesman.com/children-men-alfonso-cuaron-2006-apocalypse-coronavirus

It’s kind of all over the place. I read the conclusion twice and wasn’t sure what the point was, but if it’s “watch this movie” then OK

It's quite entertaining as a provocative piece painting a broad-brush extreme dystopian pessimistic mood. But the overall point and details jump around wildly.

It's wildly inflated: it's a piece saying 'hey the mood of Children of Men resonates quite a bit with the current devastated state of the UK', and then tries to assume an of authority to move onto considerations of if it's too late to halt the juggernaut of something not quite specified (coronavirus, global pandemics, climate change, global capitalism, fatalism and passivity?).

On the plus side, at least it didn't throw in the global spectacular consumer economy.

i read it last night, it seemed fine and uncontroversial to me, mostly a round-up of things people have already said

This film was very quick off the mark to use dubstep in the soundtrack. As it turns out that was one of the less credible projections for 2027, although it's mostly not mixed all that prominently anyway.

Well... I hope in 2027 when the entire world is firm in the grips of a massive dubstep revival that you come back to this thread and apologize roundly to everyone reading.

Lol yes - That scene read very much to me as the 2027 version of “old git blasting Led Zeppelin”

That's the vibe I got, too!

LOL are you grandad's talking about Jasper's "zen music"? That's Aphex Twin IIRC. The dubstep stuff is playing in the background of a few scenes and presumably supposed to be contemporary; Kode 9 & Spaceape in the pub I think, and Digital Mystikz Anti War Dub which I just checked prices on and if there's a revival in 2027 I'll really be wondering if I should have hung on to those DMZ 12"s a bit longer.

ahh i had never noticed that. well 90s house continues to be fucking everywhere, so....

Good on that!

Also Roots Manuva's Witness (1 Hope) in one scene, which will probably still be getting rinsed in 2027. I guess maybe in the world of the film pop culture stagnated when there stopped being young people?

that’s a really good point