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

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.