Children of Men

[jim stone]

Just saw this film, which is in some ways one of the best movies I've ever seen.
Works on every level, best action, extraordinarily interesting story,
a depiction of a dysfunctional future, a political thriller,
a religious parable, a commentary on our social/political
situation and the war on terror. Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Julien Moore
are among the cast and the Director Alfonso Cuarón
is some sort of genius. Maybe the most cinematic
film I've ever seen and perhaps the best cinematography.

Anybody seen this? Very disturbing but immensely successful.
I've never seen a movie look so real and capture so well the
quirky unpredictability of human events.

[Alan]

I saw it a couple of years ago and some of the scenes are still vivid in my memory.

[Paul]

Yep it's a good one. The cinematography is truly masterful. one of the scenes, I don't remember which one is about as long as you can go without a cut in a single camera shot. This is very very difficult to do, especially in one with action like the one I'm talking about. I think it is one of the ones where they are running through the street being pursued by the Govt people.

[jim stone]

Yes there is 454 seconds of an apparently continuous shot at the end of the picture,
where the hero is in the midst of a combat scene trying to get to the young mother
he is protecting. I've never seen action like this before.

I think the film is being studied in film school. Oddly, for a picture full of action,
it didn't do well at the box office. It's being called a masterpiece.

[crookedtune]

Netflix delivered it today. Now I just need to look for two hours I can hijack.... Thx!

[Dale]

That's a terrific movie. I watched it and then watched it again to try to figure out what it was about the way the movie was made that made it seem so vivid.

[dubhlinn]

It shows up here regularly on Cable...go figure.

Amazing piece of work.

Slan,
D.

[jim stone]

There is a scene where the hero is trying to escape from the farm run by this terrorist group, with two women, one of them the young pregnant African woman. So they get in this car, which they know has to be jumpstarted, and they start to roll toward the gate. They pop the clutch but the car doesn’t start. They roll through the gate where people start shouting at them. It’s a long downhill to the road and they pop the clutch again but the car doesn’t start. Lots of people are running after them. They get to the road and pop the clutch, but the car doesn’t start. I think it starts on the fourth try.

It occurred to me that in any other movie, the car would start on the second try. We would have got the idea and it would have been enough. But things were happening as they do in reality, and it just kept up that way. I noticed a few minutes into the film that it was like watching reality, not like it was a documentary but that things were happening as they do in the real world. There were no clichés.

[crookedtune]

Wow!!!! (Pull my finger).

[Paul]

I think the film is being studied in film school. Oddly, for a picture full of action,
it didn't do well at the box office. It's being called a masterpiece.

There is no doubt about that, Jim. I bought the DVD and watched it at the recommendation of one of my classmates who is a video and film production major. I might have never seen it otherwise.

Dale I think part of what makes it so vivid (besides the compelling drama) is the remarkable camera artistry and the color palette and filtering.

[jim stone]

Wow!!!! (Pull my finger).

The reviewers say that Michael Caine based his character
on his friend, John Lennon.

[Dale]

I think the film is being studied in film school. Oddly, for a picture full of action,
it didn't do well at the box office. It's being called a masterpiece.

There is no doubt about that, Jim. I bought the DVD and watched it at the recommendation of one of my classmates who is a video and film production major. I might have never seen it otherwise.

Dale I think part of what makes it so vivid (besides the compelling drama) is the remarkable camera artistry and the color palette and filtering.

I think that's right and that's the visual component. Jim's point that the film scrupulously avoids film cliche is the other key to appreciating the film.

[Caj]

It occurred to me that in any other movie, the car would start on the second try.

Usually when a car doesn't start the first time, everyone knows that the protagonist will escape in time, and it's simply a matter of dramatic tension (and yet, how do you achieve dramatic tension when everyone knows what will happen?) The Children of Men scene was realistic enough, and immersed within a story of realistic failures, that I really thought "oh crap, he's genuinely not getting out of this."


I later saw No Country for Old Men, and I think that whole movie is about the cliche expectations we have in movies, and stories in general. They take a pretty standard story concept and make everything happen the way it's not supposed to happen in a movie.

For example (WARNING: spoilers from here on out...), they build up this perfect protagonist, a strong silent type, an honorable man to the point of endangering his own life, a dude whose honest horse sense keeps him a step ahead of the psycho bad guy. He happens upon a satchel of drug money, another movie trope: since it's drug money it doesn't violate Hollywood ethics for the good guy to have it. The psycho bad guy is skilled and determined, the one man who can match wits with the dude. Of course this turns the story into a one-on-one battle of good versus evil. A wise old cop is gradually converging on them both, surely to turn the tide right when it is needed. The hero's wife is safely packed away right at the start, allowing the dude to play cloak-and-dagger without the ethical burden of endangering his family. So far this is every action movie I've ever seen.

But look, you take a satchel of some cartel's drug money, and you're gonna die. This is exactly what we think cannot happen, even though it's the obvious outcome. Even if he does die, we expect it will be a meaningful death in a climactic moment, so they kill him randomly in the middle of the story. There is no showdown with the antagonist, the old cop never catches up (of course not, it's unrealistic for a homicide investigation to proceed that fast) and the wife is murdered because the bad guy is a psycho who is of course not going to honor some cinematic rule of putting the womenfolk out of play. Usually a female character is killed in a cynical expenditure to advance the male protagonist's story; here, she is killed after the dude's story is already over, and it advances no story at all.

In the end even the psycho is deconstructed with a pointless accident, something that would never happen to Moriarty or Darth Maul. That last crash is so random, almost like a car falling from the sky, that it's practically a signal from the producers of their intent to make everything as meaningless as possible.

It's the most I've ever seen a movie criticize the viewer without explicitly breaking the fourth wall.

[I.D.10-t]

I later saw No Country for Old Men, and I think that whole movie is about the cliche expectations we have in movies, and stories in general. They take a pretty standard story concept and make everything happen the way it's not supposed to happen in a movie.

I thought Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood was one of those movies, about a dozen old western cliches were set up, and when right at the delivery, it seemed that the movie just walked away and abandoned it.

[Dale]

It occurred to me that in any other movie, the car would start on the second try.

Usually when a car doesn't start the first time, everyone knows that the protagonist will escape in time, and it's simply a matter of dramatic tension (and yet, how do you achieve dramatic tension when everyone knows what will happen?) The Children of Men scene was realistic enough, and immersed within a story of realistic failures, that I really thought "oh crap, he's genuinely not getting out of this."


I later saw No Country for Old Men, and I think that whole movie is about the cliche expectations we have in movies, and stories in general. They take a pretty standard story concept and make everything happen the way it's not supposed to happen in a movie..

Keep in mind, though, that the movie is a very faithful adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel. I doubt that he writes novels with an eye toward how it will film, but in a sense, in breaks fiction conventions and cliches, too.