[QUOTE=St_Ides]
And the whole working in of the Abu Ghraib imagery seemed a little ham-handed. Yeah, we already saw all the rest of the “homeland security” images you put in earlier. We see all the parallels. We really don’t need you to force this into our faces. We’re not that daft.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, a lot of people ARE that daft, though “daft” isn’t the word I would use.
[QUOTE=Equipoise]
That guy was a jerk no matter what, but when Kee started making noises (she was in pain due to being in labor) he wanted her to get up and off the bus. Miriam tried to stop him and it distracted him, so she was yanked off. He went back again to get Kee (I got that idea that as much as he hated immigrants, he particularly hated blacks) Theo acted like he could barely speak English, and pointed out that Kee had pissed on the floor of the bus. I forget the words he used. “Pissed” means drunk in England rather than urination. Kee hadn’t urinated, her water had broken, but that distracted the soldier again, and disgusted him enough to leave them alone.
[/quote]
The thing is, the bus stopped and the cop seemed intent on throwing someone off. His target was the guy sitting in front of Miriam & Kee. He really just felt like stopping the bus and throwing someone off, and then noticed Kee throwing a fit, decided, “what the heck, throw her off too,” then luckily Miriam volunteered herself?
I guess I just don’t get why the bus was stopped prior to its destination except as a contrivance to sacrifice Miriam. If that’s what it was, I noticed.
If you’re thinking of the same scene I’m thinking of, there was a dead pig near the drainpipe as well as some more dead cows in that same scene. It’s like livestock was being left to die all over the countryside, like abandoned cars.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
I guess I just don’t get why the bus was stopped prior to its destination except as a contrivance to sacrifice Miriam. If that’s what it was, I noticed.
[/quote]
They obviously had lots of other people that had been hauled off their buses at that particular point. Whether it was a place where they generally took the worst of the worst of the buses, or just a place where they grabbed a few random people in order to convince the rest to be more docile and placid doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that they did drag people of the bus there was pretty well established by the scenes outside the bus, that Miriam saves Kee is what matters there, not the motivations of the guards.
There’s one scene that is a very long, lingering shot over the carcasses of burning cows - including a cow’s leg dropping off as it burns - I assumed all the other patches of burning stuff were also cows. Because they were cows, I assume it was Mad Cow related.
There was another scene inside the fugee camp where people were burning the bodies of humans, but one at a time on platforms. Those seemed to be half ceremonial half fires for warmth burnings.
Well… Color me unimpressed. I just finished watching it now, and I was hoping for a cerebral distopian future much like in 1984 and Blade Runner and even V for Vendetta.
I’ll say now that I will be using spoilers. I hate the spoiler box and it’s already written in the thread title.
Firstly, there were so many parts in the movie that had me thinking, "Why are they doing that?!? It’s simply not logical! Why did Theo automatically assume that it was best to go to the Human Project after he realized that the Fishes wanted to kill them and take the baby? Why didn’t he do it the way he had suggested at the meeting?
Secondly, is it just me, or is there really any hope to be found? Wow, a girl had a baby, that guarantees nothing to me, honestly. As far as I understood, fertility dropped off somewhat gradually. Perhaps her being able to get pregnant was just a one-off? Am I supposed to be happy that I know that another human was born, and that’s all? Secondly, the Human Project? I never understood exactly who they were, but why would he believe that they could make any sense of her pregnancy? I found myself, throughout the entire film wanting to know what was going to happen to humanity! I don’t see it as a foregone conclusion that if she makes it out alive that humanity is saved!
The action was great, I’ll admit, but I really wished it could have done better in the story department. It had so many great opporunities. Like the previous poster commented, why? “because everyone has gone mad!” It seems like there was a huge opportunity to involve the official government in the poltline. Just because the Fishes think that it would be a waste, doesn’t really convince me. Indeed the only two moments of the film that made any sense where when Clive Owen’s character suggested that they make it public, and the point where the soldiers stop for the crying baby.
Honestly, there could have been much more effort put into explaining the world as it is. Doesn’t that really say a lot more about who we are? You put the two main characters running for their lives against the crazy terrorists and the fascist government. It doesn’t seem terribly original to me. We only relate to these two people who are simply acting out of instinct in trying to save humanity. Why couldn’t there be other sides to it?
For me there was no cathartic moment. It’s all I asked after having everything build up so much. I don’t see where the hope is.
I saw it differently.
I appreciated the fact that what was going on on screen was not the most important thing happening in this movies world.
So many movies create a future/fantasy world and then drop you into the most significant happening in that world with the most significant characters of that world. And then they explain everything in detail (the whys, the hows) and show how everything unfolds beginning to end. Like a Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
Other films, like this, create an entire future vision/world but then tell a little side story that happened within that world at a significant or non-significant time. You just get glimpses of the bigger picture without much explanation of what’s going on. Kind of like Signs compared to ID4. ID4 was the big picture. Signs was just a little side story.
Was the new baby the cure for the world? Who knows? But it was neat to witness the birth of a baby in a world where the next youngest person was 18.
I was pretty sure they were burning at least some horses - I thought I saw a hoof that wasn’t cloven. To me it was really sad.
I assumed the stop before the gates was to remove violent criminals or something - the stated purpose of the camps was a holding pen before deportation, right? So theoretically I figured they were seperating actual criminals and troublemakers from refugees, but in practice of course it was cruel and capricious.
No. It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, period. I don’t care that there were no definitive answers. It was character driven–the movie was not about science, it was about humanity. People who find that kind of anarchy in the face of human fertility to be “unrealistic” are clearly not as cynical about human nature as they should be. While I didn’t take Britain’s xenophobia to be direct reflection of 9-11 in the U.S., it was extremely believable based on having existed in this country before and after the World Trade Center Attacks. Fear turns human beings into primitive animals concerned only for their own survival. It is amazing to me what one event did to the cultural landscape of this country. Imagine if something even more catastrophic were to happen to the world at large? Look at the freaking Holocaust–you don’t think brutality like this is within the realm of human possibility? God what I wouldn’t give to have that much faith in human nature.
The cinematography was incredible. The way it was shot was so realistic, and I was blown away by some of the “chase” scenes. It was a very silent film in that it didn’t try to manipulate your emotions with a dramatic score. You just had the camera and what was going on. I also liked that it portrayed the effect of terror and brutality without too much graphic or disturbing violence. I was extremely uncomfortable and afraid for the characters and the world they inhabited, but never to the point I had to look away or run out of the theater.
I thought
the scene where Julian gets shot in the throat
was extremely realistic. I totally bought that it would go down just like that in real life. I felt that way about most of the movie in general. Though it was a sci-fi, it didn’t try to wow you with fancy futuristic machines… it was just a story… about some people.
And to those who felt
Kee’s going into labor as they entered the camp was entirely too “convenient” for the plot’s pretenses
I disagree. As I saw it,
The stress of the pure horror of the situation induced her into labor prematurely. Not a “plot gimmick” just a terrible trick biology played on her. It actually made me feel for pregnant women who had to endure the Holocaust and other atrocities.
God, what a movie. I saw it two or three weeks ago and I still lay awake at night thinking, “God, what a great movie.” The fact that it still has an impact on me just makes me more certain of its superiority.
[QUOTE=olivesmarch4th]
No. It’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, period. I don’t care that there were no definitive answers. It was character driven–the movie was not about science, it was about humanity. People who find that kind of anarchy in the face of human fertility to be “unrealistic” are clearly not as cynical about human nature as they should be. While I didn’t take Britain’s xenophobia to be direct reflection of 9-11 in the U.S., it was extremely believable based on having existed in this country before and after the World Trade Center Attacks. Fear turns human beings into primitive animals concerned only for their own survival. It is amazing to me what one event did to the cultural landscape of this country. Imagine if something even more catastrophic were to happen to the world at large? Look at the freaking Holocaust–you don’t think brutality like this is within the realm of human possibility? God what I wouldn’t give to have that much faith in human nature.
[/QUOTE]
It’s not a matter of thinking that human barbarism isn’t possible; it’s just a matter of wanting to know what twists and turns led to a particular act of barbarism. If I set a short story 20 years in the future in which Mormons are being ruthlessly hunted down and exterminated, it’s fair for the readers to want to know how this turn of events came about, even if they are perfectly well aware that human beings are capable of being that cruel (ie, the Holocaust). If no explanation is forthcoming (or if the explanation is along the lines of “well, a nuclear bomb went off…and then we started killing Mormons”), the story will probably suffer. That’s one of my problems with “Children of Men” – it asks us to make the non-intuitive leap from “no more children being born” to “massive anarchy, fascism, destruction, warfare, totalitarianism, famine, etc.” with nary an intermediate step. The problem is compounded by the way the movie tries to remain grounded in reality, with its references to our modern day world, culture, politics, technology, etc. If it had clearly been set in an alternative universe with its own unique historical forces I might not have had such a problem with that leap.
The thing is, for the characters it’s been 20 years of gradual changes. It’s just the way things are for them. The way the movie is put together and written, it’s obvious that the main aesthetic was verisimilitude. It would be weird if they had too much expository dialog. I mean, how often do you reminisce about the history of the internet? It’s only been about ten years since it became really widespread, and it has had a huge impact on the world, yet I’ll bet you take it for granted and would almost never talk to someone about how it developed.
You get some back-story in a very naturalistic way as characters talk about what it was like Before, but the last thing the writer or director is going to do is info-dump on you. The way the world got to be as it was shown in the film is left up to you to create. It’s not important to the story and is outside the focus of the movie.
Like Hampshire, I appreciate it when the writer leaves gaps in knowledge for you to puzzle over. I’ve criticized movies for explaining too much. It not only brings you out of the story by drawing attention to the fact that you’re watching a movie in which Stuff Must be Explained, but it also strikes me as being a bit contemptuous of the audience. Saying in effect, “We know you’re not smart enough to work this out on your own, so here’s a 5 minute history to bring you up to date.”
There are situations where you simply must orient your audience or things won’t make any sense. Blade Runner has a few expository scenes to let you know about the replicants, their motivations and abilities, but there are a ton of background details that aren’t filled in. There’s no explanation of the genetic engineering principles; no background on how and why the position of the Blade Runners was created, especially whether the position is public or private, official or semi-legal; no information on the outworld colonies. Many other little mysteries about the way the world is remain.
Memento has a lot of unexplained details, and some questions are impossible to answer for certain. We know that Teddy was manipulating Leonard, so we don’t know whether his revelation of Leonard’s past is accurate or not. We don’t know how much or how often Leonard has altered his memories by excluding information from his files. In a few cases, it’s fairly certain that the director was deliberately altering details—probably to show you how fallible your own normal memory is—and was expecting some people to notice. It’s also a good bet that the gaps in our knowledge are equally purposeful.
All three of these movies are “smart” movies. You aren’t going to get easy answers, and even if you think about the mysteries posed you aren’t going to be able to solve anything definitively. If you like all the loose ends tied up and all the questions answered, you probably didn’t like Blade Runner or Memento any better than Children of Men. I also like movies where everything is clear and resolved in the end, but I really appreciate ones that leave some things unexplained.
[QUOTE=St_Ides]
Actually, not a single character who turned out to be “good” even touched a gun. And every main character who touched a gun ended up being “evil”. I’m not exactly pro-gun, but even I found this ridiculous. To at least have a gun on you in such a dire situation where everyone else is shooting seems like a no-brainer.
[/QUOTE]
Not quite true. The guy who’s leading Theo, Kee, and the Gypsy lady to the boat is carrying a gun, as are several others at the building he came from, who help them arrange for the boat.
And I’m not sure that I agree with you that it’s a good idea to have a gun. In a hostile and high-strung situation, carrying a gun that you don’t know how to use just makes things more dangerous. Someone could well take a shot at you because they see the gun and don’t know if you’re a threat. Being unarmed won’t necessarily keep you from getting shot (it didn’t work for the people coming out of the building Kee was in), but it might help.
[QUOTE=Sleel]
You get some back-story in a very naturalistic way as characters talk about what it was like Before, but the last thing the writer or director is going to do is info-dump on you. The way the world got to be as it was shown in the film is left up to you to create. It’s not important to the story and is outside the focus of the movie.
Like Hampshire, I appreciate it when the writer leaves gaps in knowledge for you to puzzle over. I’ve criticized movies for explaining too much. It not only brings you out of the story by drawing attention to the fact that you’re watching a movie in which Stuff Must be Explained, but it also strikes me as being a bit contemptuous of the audience. Saying in effect, “We know you’re not smart enough to work this out on your own, so here’s a 5 minute history to bring you up to date.”
[/QUOTE]
Hear, Hear!
I like a movie that does not feel the need to talk down to me. Some details may escape me, but in this day of DVDs, I have plenty of opportunity to go back and review a richly detailed setting. This is preferable to some cheesy action flick that has the characters saying things like, “But that means YOU were the one who did it!” because the audience is assumed not to be able to follow along.
Also, it’s good to have things that make you wonder how they got that way. So many things in the real world pass us by with no explanation. It makes a movie setting so much more realistic to have the same thing.
I have no problem with the anarchy and xenophobia, etc., I just don’t really buy it, is all. But it doesn’t necessarily ruin the movie for me.
[QUOTE=Sleel]
Like Hampshire, I appreciate it when the writer leaves gaps in knowledge for you to puzzle over. I’ve criticized movies for explaining too much. It not only brings you out of the story by drawing attention to the fact that you’re watching a movie in which Stuff Must be Explained, but it also strikes me as being a bit contemptuous of the audience. Saying in effect, “We know you’re not smart enough to work this out on your own, so here’s a 5 minute history to bring you up to date.”
[/QUOTE]
I don’t buy it. Getting the necessary backstory in is tough, but a director of Cuaron’s skills is up to the task. After all, he figured out plenty of clever ways to give us back story on the characters and the nature of the infertility crisis. Did you feel he was talking down to you when Theo and Julian had a conversation about their relationship and the loss of their child? Or when the newscaster at the beginning did a recap of the infertility crisis?
Ambiguity does not by default equal intelligence. There’s good movie ambiguity and there’s bad movie ambiguity, and I thought “Children of Men” had some of each. As I said in my first post in this thread, there are some questions I’m glad the movie doesn’t answer (ie. the cause of the infertility, what happens to Kee and the baby at the end). But there are also some it should have, and I thought the the state of the world in “Children of Men” fell in that category. Since Cuaron sets things so firmly in the real world, and since he seems to establish a causal relationship between the lack of babies and the fascism, famine, holocaust, etc. (which, to me at least, was not an obvious jump), I think he owed us a little more of an explanation. YMMV.
Emotionally the story is pretty wrenching, if a bit over the top. The idea that
All of the planet is sterile and the youngest person is 18 years old
is a fairly cool premise. No full explanation is ever given for this- a fact I LOVE.
The entire structure of delivery of information is so akin to real life, opposed to the normal film script where certain characters are charged with the onerous task of Moving The Plot Along. Offhanded comments and small bits of dialogue hint at
a huge planet-wide biological event. The scene where the midwife/doula talks about calling all over the planet to check on other birthing centers, only to hear the same awful news about the drop-off in fertility was terrific.
Technically it’s a knock-out. I’m a professional cameraman and normally excessive hand-held drives me insane, as it did in the second Bourne film. Here, the operating is so fine and so tuned to the emotional content of each scene that it becomes an integral part of what we are feeling- as it should.
I want to know more about this world.
Cartooniverse
Given that you’re a steadicam operator, Cartooniverse, what did you think of the several rather remarkbly long takes that were featured in the film?
Zombie thread alert, but since that seems allowable in Cafe Society sometimes, here goes…
Finally saw this movie yesterday on DVD and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it had its flaws but was overall very affecting and my mind’s been mulling it over all day.
Why not go to the government and be public? Well, the argument that they would never have admitted that a “fugee” was fertile is a good one. Kee would have disappeared. Maybe not killed but surely basically flayed alive to figure out why she was fertile. After all, she was just an illegal and nobody would have missed her. It’s quite possible the baby would have disappeared as well - I never underestimate the will of a government to do whatever it takes to preserve the status quo.
Interesting that Kee - after barely knowing Theo - instantly says she’ll do what he says. Kee is, in many ways, a cipher, an unimportant character, an object (despite being the central catalyst for the film).
Theo progresses from an apathetic, stagnant person, to someone who takes charge. His motives aren’t perfect at first - wants to get away from the Fishes who are going to kill him - but at the same time he realizes he has to follow Julian’s plan and get Kee to freedom. He develops a sense of purpose and comes back to life. Just in time to die (almost certainly, there’s always the faint hope that he was just unconscious).
I got a kick out of the moment when Theo asks Kee how she got pregnant. I don’t remember the exact dialog but it was something like this:
Theo: how’d it happen? Who’s the father?
Kee: No idea, I was a virgin
Theo: (startled look)
Kee: (laughs) Naw, I slept with lots of guys. Always thought I was going to get VD but this happened instead.
I wonder what drove the refugee camp economy. The older Russian couple seemed pretty well-off, for such a horrible place - their own room, a bed, fresh fruit, lots of photos. How’d they manage to get all that in there?
I’m surprised that nobody commented on what I saw as the obvious cause of the infertility, that was tossed in almost as an aside: the flu pandemic. They said there was a pandemic in 2008 (where Theo and Julian’s son died). The last baby was born in 2009. The strong implication being that the flu pandemic somehow affected all women and stopped childbearing; including leading to an unusually high rate of miscarriages of existing pregnancies.
That would also explain why existing frozen embryos couldn’t save the day. If the pathogen affected the uterine environment somehow, even implanting last year’s kidsicle wouldn’t help.
Do I believe such a universal effect would occur? No, not really - there are isolated populations wh would not be exposed and they would continue having children until exposed to the outside world. But for the sake of the movie, I’ll take it.
[QUOTE=Mama Zappa]
I wonder what drove the refugee camp economy. The older Russian couple seemed pretty well-off, for such a horrible place - their own room, a bed, fresh fruit, lots of photos. How’d they manage to get all that in there?
[/QUOTE]
I assumed that they had lived in an area that was later walled off and became a refugee camp.
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy]
Given that you’re a steadicam operator, Cartooniverse, what did you think of the several rather remarkbly long takes that were featured in the film?
[/QUOTE]
The word in the community is that the A Camera/Steadicam Op who was hired to shoot the entire picture did indeed have his rig out on the first day of shooting. Because it was called for. The D.P. and Director discussed, and discussed…and didn’t shoot Steadicam that day. Or the next day. Or the next day. At some point, it was left on the truck and never came off.
The most emotionally gripping sequence was the one near the end that carried us through the camp and into the building and up the steps. I’ve seen behind the scenes photos of it. The fellow was shooting off of a small LCD monitor mounted to the camera body. Instead of putting his eye to the eyepiece, ( which is the way we shoot most of the time when hand-held ), he literally was hauling around the small camera body, shoving it and aiming it where he needed to. The eyepiece was capped. The LCD provided his image.
To be honest, I cannot imagine a single moment where Steadicam would have been better than hand-held. Even the lock-offs were hand-held. Notably some of the very “quiet” frames in the cottage when we first meet Michael Caine and his wife/partner. Just beautiful operating.
To give the man his due, the A Camera Op was George Richmond
Just saw this movie recently, so I’m bumping the thread.
I really, really liked it. A detailed and convincing dystopic vision, great cinematography, tense (and long) action sequences, and an undercurrent of hope that made it very potent.
If you watch the DVD extras, you’ll see that the camera in the car was remotely-operated and hung from the ceiling of the car. They choreographed that scene beautifully - the actors’ car seats would recline so they’d be out of the way, and then sit back up. The windshield would drop out of the way when it had to, as well. The director and camera crew were in a structure atop the car, which itself was mounted on a rig driven by a crash-helmeted driver in front, just a few inches off the ground and out of our line-of-sight.
Yes, I did that. The DVD extras also include some of them that you might otherwise miss. The headline about denial of torture specifically mentioned MI5, the British security service, roughly equivalent to the FBI.
One of the headlines in the Fishes’ little papered-up interrogation box read, “A right royal rip off: Charles should be throne out,” implying that Britain has a King Charles. (Also, on the helmet of one of the London policemen in the coffeeshop at the beginning you can see the royal cypher “CR” (presumably for “Charles Rex”). The current Prince of Wales will be 79 in November 2027.
The IMDB trivia page is definitely worth a read: Children of Men (2006) - Trivia - IMDb
Cuaron said in an interview that it was actually from Psalm 90:3: “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.”
More to come…
There are some great touches in Cuaron’s near-future British dystopia: The Ark of Arts has saved Picasso’s Guernica, Michaelangelo’s David (although its leg is broken) and a boatload of Rembrandts. Buckingham Palace and the Mall are secure behind barriers (the Household Cavalry still even has its horses). UK Homeland Security’s badge shows the British Isles with the Crown above. Schools are abandoned in ruins. The streets of London look worn-down, grim and Third World - there are even tuk-tuks!
I guess she said in interviews afterwards that she liked it, although she noted it departed quite a bit from her book. She has a cameo in the movie, although I wasn’t able to spot her.
Some of the headlines on the wall in Jasper’s house refer to a massive research effort that went nowhere. After 18 years of trying, they may have just given up, or are still trying (mandatory fertility tests etc.) but without any hope of success.
See some of the futuristic ads, including for pet clothing, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VnIrXmdYhY
I guessed that only Luke and a relatively small cabal were in on the plot to kill Julian. Luke just had to get the two guys on the motorcycle to hook up with some of the outlaws out in the woods to make the hit. Then, with Julian dead, he was an obvious candidate to succeed her (BTW, has anyone else ever heard of a woman named Julian?).
Well said, and I agree.
Weren’t they Romanian, like Theo’s little-old-lady contact with the dog? I assumed they’d lived there all along, or were protected by gangsters of the same ethnicity.
If you watch through the end credits, you hear the laughter of children and the Sanskrit word “Shantih” (Peace) repeated three times (as Jasper did). Peace may yet come; hope endures.
Great movie.