Children of Men

[Antoine Doinel]

Finally saw, Children Of Men tonight and liked it very much. I'm not sure why people are saying the ending of the film is "Spielbergian". It offers a faint ray of hope, without any clear answers, in a film that is otherwise relentlessly grim and more often than not, breathtakingly involving.

However, by the time the film wrapped and I saw the five screenwriter credits pop up I couldn't help but feel the film would actually benefit from being twenty or thirty minutes longer. Cuaron and his team created such a palpable universe for their characters I wanted to know more about the refugee camps, the social system in Britain etc etc. There was such a great opportunity to create a larger canvas to paint the story on.

As for the film's politics, they are broadly applied but not with any definite statement. Yes, there are references to Abu Gharib but that's about all I took from it. Otherwise it's a unique idea, executed with some panache by Cuaron. Masterpiece? No. Worthy of award nominations? Maybe for cinematography. But I feel a director's cut might reveal an even stronger picture down the road.

[Michael]

Finally saw it last night. There's not much I can add to what Antoine Doinel wrote in the previous post. He nailed every thing I thought and felt about Children of Men. It's really breathtaking to look at - the astounding cinematography capturing the beautifully grim atmosphere and everything. That was more than enough for me. An exquisitely made film that is hundred times better than any of the Best Pic nominees such as Babel and Little Miss Sunshine...that's for sure. And it's also GREAT seeing Julianne Moore being back in a film of that caliber.

[jorencain]

And it's also GREAT seeing Julianne Moore being back in a film of that caliber.

I suppose, but she really seemed like a weak link to me. I LOVED this movie, but every scene she was in felt awkward and forced. Very strange. And I usually have no problem with her.

[Michael]

I know what you mean, jorencain. Not the same as her stunning work with Todd Haynes, PT Anderson and Robert Altman and so forth. But lets hope she's back to choosing better directors.

[dadaistnun]

I know what you mean, jorencain. Not the same as her stunning work with Todd Haynes, PT Anderson and Robert Altman and so forth. But lets hope she's back to choosing better directors.

She's doing I'm Not There for Haynes and Savage Grace for Tom Kalin, his first feature since Swoon.

[Michael]

She's doing I'm Not There for Haynes and Savage Grace for Tom Kalin, his first feature since Swoon.

Her working with Haynes again is very exciting. Never seen Swoon so I'm not familiar with Kalin.

[dadaistnun]

I haven't seen Swoon since it came out (1992), but I recall liking it a lot. The only other thing of Kalin's I've seen is a short called Some of Them Are Old which is footage (stills?) of his friends who died of AIDS. The soundtrack is the Eno song of the same name.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Where's Kalin been since Swoon?

[zedz]

I haven't seen Swoon since it came out (1992), but I recall liking it a lot. The only other thing of Kalin's I've seen is a short called Some of Them Are Old which is footage (stills?) of his friends who died of AIDS. The soundtrack is the Eno song of the same name.

He must have quite an Eno fixation - I've seen another couple of (pre-Swoon, I think) shorts of his with soundtracks provided by Warm Jets / Tiger Mountain songs. One was 'Third Uncle', the other I can't recall.

EDIT: Looks like the films I saw were Nomads (1993, accompanied by "Third Uncle") and Darling Child (1993, accompanied by "Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)"). Was the "Some of Them Are Old" film Finally Destroy Us?

TOM KALIN
FINALLY DESTROY US
USA, 1991, 4 mins, video
TOM KALIN's work focuses on the portrayal of gay sexuality both in the age of AIDS and historically. His tapes are characterised by beautiful sampled images drawn from a variety of film and video sources.
'These meetings, these partings, finally destroy us.' The sense of loss of these words by Virginia Woolf is the theme around which this poetic work is conceived. Couples kissing, people walking, random faces and dreamlike film of high divers live in a silent world of old and new footage. There is an unselfconsciousness about the people we see which creates a sense of distance and pathos.

Both of the shorts I saw were fine landscape films. Swoon is a landmark of the New Queer Cinema - is it available in a decent DVD edition?

[marty]

There's never been a DVD as far as I know, nor indeed one for the other two pictures mentioned, although they re-released Paris late last year theatrically.

Accent have had Swoon and Todd Haynes' films Poison and his short Dottie Gets Spanked in their coming soon DVD section for a whilenow.

[criterionsnob]

Can we start a Tom Kalin or Swoon thread?

There is a DVD in R1 from Strand Releasing and it looks great.

[dadaistnun]

Poison was released in region 1 by Fox Lorber with a commentary by Haynes, Vachon, and Lyons. It appears to be out of print, though.

[miless]

Poison was released in region 1 by Fox Lorber with a commentary by Haynes, Vachon, and Lyons. It appears to be out of print, though.

aren't all Fox Lorber titles out of print (they went belly-up a few years ago)... Criterion has scooped up a handful of FL titles including Clean, Shaven, Jules & Jim, 400 Blows, Ran, Yi Yi, Shoot The Piano Player... I know that there are others, butI cannot think of them right now... (I am also really hoping that Criterion got Nostalghia from FL, because just what we need in R1 is another shitty transfer of a Tarkovsky film)

[dadaistnun]

aren't all Fox Lorber titles out of print (they went belly-up a few years ago)... Criterion has scooped up a handful of FL titles including Clean, Shaven, Jules & Jim, 400 Blows, Ran, Yi Yi, Shoot The Piano Player... I know that there are others, butI cannot think of them right now... (I am also really hoping that Criterion got Nostalghia from FL, because just what we need in R1 is another shitty transfer of a Tarkovsky film)

Oh, yeah. Duh. I'd love for Criterion to pick this up (any Haynes for that matter). Zeitgeist still has the theatrical rights as far as I can tell/

[Cinesimilitude]

I caught this last night, and I don't think I can fully comprehend how much I loved it. It's possible that this film had me more wrapped up in the plight of a few characters than any other film I've seen. Maybe it was my sleep deprivation, but I was biting my nails all the way through the film, cause after the major character was killed, it just set a tone of "you don't have a damn clue what's going to happen here". I really wish someone could see tis movie without seeing the trailer, as I'd love to watch their reaction. the single Image I had of Owen in the boat going through the grate was the one thing that detracted from my experience. I agree that the film would benefit with an extra 30 minutes or so, as long as the ending remains unchanged. More of Theo's activist history and overall backstory would have greatly added to the emotional impact of the film. The scene in which the 2 sides stop fighting (those of you who've seen it know which part I am talking about) Is my favorite moment in the film, and probably among my top 10 moments of films made this millenium. Can't wait for the HD-DVD of this one.

[Antoine Doinel]

A British company called Foreign Company created all the fake ads and billboards in the film. Here's a trailer featuring a bunch of the ads and products they created for the film. Pretty cool stuff.

[filmnoir1]

I just picked up the region 1 release of this film today. The special features are quite good. There is a making of featurette about the use of long takes, especially the sequence in the car. Also there is an interesting short commentary by Slavoj Zizek on the film. This is a film that is going to generate interest from scholars as well as average viewers for some time to come.

[flyonthewall2983]

I gotta admit, I wasn't really impressed. When the legend "from the director of Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire" or whatever showed up, all bets were off for me to take this seriously.

I don't think I've ever been so wrong in my fucking life. It's brilliant.

[lord_clyde]

I gotta admit, I wasn't really impressed. When the legend "from the director of Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire" or whatever showed up, all bets were off for me to take this seriously.

I don't think I've ever been so wrong in my fucking life. It's brilliant.

Isn't it though? Imagine my surprise when the credits rolled and there were eight names credited to the screenplay.

[jbeall]

I just picked up the region 1 release of this film today. The special features are quite good. There is a making of featurette about the use of long takes, especially the sequence in the car. Also there is an interesting short commentary by Slavoj Zizek on the film. This is a film that is going to generate interest from scholars as well as average viewers for some time to come.

The special features are absolutely great. Although I was vaguely (and inarticulately) aware of it, I'm glad Zizek pointed out that Cuaron's aesthetic is to have the really interesting things happen in the background, while the foregrounded characters are sometimes completely unaware or unconcerned about it. (This was especially true in Y Tu Mama Tambien when the boys had to get the car keys from a sister who was at a political rally; you see them fighting through the rally to find the sister, but you never find out what the rally's about.)

I also really like the 30-min. doc that Cuaron producd (also on the disc) with various left-wingers I've read in the pages of The nation and other lefty rags over the years. It helps lay out a few of the many issues Cuaron is commenting on in the film.

[colinr0380]

I'm late to this party, and I still have not read the PD James novel yet, but I really enjoyed this film. I liked the sense of all wars being filtered through one futuristic conflict, and while it felt a little obvious at the start I thought the film managed to build up considerable power using this conceit. There were elements of IRA and ETA-esque terrorist bombings; Julian's group felt a little like those groups of animal rights extremists - paradoxically killing to save life, and with different factions within their group with different agendas and different reasons for being involved; allusions to Abu Ghraib; groups of Eastern Europeans being rounded up and herded onto buses by guards with German Shepherds (I sort of hoped for one of the guards to shout "Raus!" but that might have been too obvious!); the Kosovo-style civilians running for cover across rubble strewn streets; planes flying past to make 'surgical strikes' at their targets etc.

I wasn't too sure whether the ending was entirely happy - I didn't really find much consolation in Cuaron's explanation of needing to become travellers rather than tie ourselves to modes of life, as symbolised by the boat 'Tomorrow'. I can understand that if they get too powerful these modes of life can become repressive and dangerous, but they can be useful in giving people a structure in which to live. The problem in the film comes because the world is in transition from one structure to the next, with an obvious rather than slow break from one to the other, as usually happens outside of a wartime situation.

In that sense the two children, Baby Diego and Kee's child represent the change. Baby Diego, despite being the youngest person in the world was also the last representative of the old world and his ironic death, killed not to make any particular statement, but just at the hands of a disgruntled autograph hunter, underlines his tragedy and shows that instead of caring for this youngest person he was turned into a freakshow, a celebrity famous for being famous, loved and hated for what he represented rather than for having any particular talent. It makes the Princess Di-style outpouring of grief for this stranger, who most would have only ever seen on television screens rather than in person, after his death seem particularly appropriate - and the more we see of the world, the more we realise how many people are being killed every day.

The infertility problem, rather than making people realise that they have to cherish the people currently alive (rather than feeling easier with the death toll because they know the birth rate will keep the population up!), seems to have had completely the opposite effect, caused major problems of genocide and made the psychological barriers between people into much more physical concrete ones. It is almost as if different factions and governments are trying to wipe out other populations before their own numbers get so low they cannot mount a major assault any more.

It is quite a bleak picture, but seems horribly apt with current events - even the visit to the world's art treasures kept in storage for the lucky few to see is a disturbing extrapolation from current practices of keeping collections locked away from general view. I'd hope that if the world was to collapse for any reason that the worlds art treasures would at least be opened up for anyone to visit and give people a last view of some of humanity's greatest creations. Instead in this 'futuristic' world, again the opposite has happened and the rulers of these societies are keeping these artefacts locked away for private pleasure and presumably with comments that they are "saving them from the anarchy of the outside world". However they can't be "protecting them for future generations" as for all they know there is not going to be any future generations, so instead they become less philanthropic and seem much more like Pharaohs, plundering their world for its most beautiful objects to adorn their pyramids - it shows how they are living in the past and also that the most powerful in this doomed society are going to be the last to feel the effects of total collapse as they have already almost hermetically sealed themselves off from the rest of the world. They might not survive any more that the rest of the world, but they'll die in comfort and style, and isn't that the most important thing?(!)

I get the impression that Kee's child however, rather than being the representative of the last of a dying society as Baby Diego was, will be the rebirth of a new generation of humanity (I guess a male baby will also have to be born at around the same time I suppose!), and the gap between one generation and the other has just been made more explicit by the infertility crisis. She'll be able to witness the old world passing from a position of never having known what it was like to live there and therefore will be able to take a more dispassionate view of the society that the characters in this film are struggling through the remnants of.

It could be thought of in religious terms as well, with instead of a flood God sending infertility to destroy human society and then funnelling all humanity back down into this child, thereby giving humanity another chance to redeem itself.

It makes the final image of Theo and Kee drifting in their boat cut off from all sight of land quite apt!

At the same time I do not feel the ending is entirely happy. The new children we hear playing over the end credits are entering a world without any older people to guide them - in the good way of not being trapped by a crumbling and frightened society run by corrupt rulers, but also in a bad way of not having anyone more experienced to turn to for advice and guidance. They will be on their own and have to figure out what to do, and one of the saddest things about the film is that is seems that humanity has been taken back to a 'year zero' point, where all the knowledge and wisdom accumulated has been completely lost and people are going to have to go back and relearn it all again, with no guarantee they will do it any differently the next time! So that is perhaps the most depressing aspect of the whole film, although I'm not sure whether the filmmakers themselves intended it to be! I assume their message was meant to be more positive at the end and suggest the possibilities rather than emphasise the loss. I suppose a case could be made that the kids couldn't mess things up worse than they already had been, but I hope a copy of the Bible isn't left lying around otherwise they could become like those kids from the Children of the Corn!

Was anyone else reminded of the ending of Dark City with Theo and Kee taking the boat through the sewers and then out of the edge of the world and into the open sea? OK, in Dark City William Hurt's character dies by being thrown out of the city into space but there does seem to be a similar sense of passing beyond the boundaries of what is known, looking back and realising what exactly it was you were part of and marvelling at how you were once in that place!

I also like the way that although the film seems to be portraying a very right wing world full of ID cards and surveillance, it also directs some cynicism towards the left wingers. Whether it is Julian and her terrorist/freedom fighters seeming to give the authorities the excuse through their actions to be even more brutal in their response, or Jasper's 60s hippie living in isolation and the past which is the only way to keep his way of life and worldview intact, or Miriam's new age style, it all seems futile once reality intrudes. It seems as if the film is trying to shed itself of all these previous left wing constructs that do not seem to bear much relevance any more by showing the representatives of each branch being killed off, often without mercy (with Jasper's death being particularly ironic at the hands of the members of Julian's group). Theo seems to stand for the 'ordinary' man being surrounded and pushed from pillar to post by all these different competing ideologies, both within the left wing itself as well as the more obvious right wing dominant society.

I thought the acting was good all round but I thought the casting of Pam Ferris was a particularly nice and subversive touch. I don't know how American viewers will react but it was brilliantly shocking to see someone who played the epitome of the jolly English countrywoman in The Darling Buds of May get dragged from the bus, hooded and presumably immediately executed on the spot! Looking back it makes sense, both for the reason I talk about above and in order to whittle down the cast to just the two main protagonists for the final journey.

I guess Cuaron must be an animal lover! He has filled this film with dogs and I think it is obvious that they have not been affected by fertility problems as humanity has (which perhaps adds weight to the argument that this is a targeted, purposeful sterilisation of a religious nature).

I was reminded of the saying about dogs being like their owners. It seems that everyone has their own canine companion from Marichka and her nosey, excitable little dog pushing Theo and Kee on to the next level and Jasper's faithful companion following his master into death. Dogs are also linked to their masters in bad ways too, such as the guard dogs used to round people up and attack them. There are also constant howls and barks of dogs throughout the film, most obviously in the scene where Kee gives birth which cements the link between dog and man.

However there is also an interesting use of cats in the film as well. The use of cats twice in the film seems to be to create a sense of security - that if cats have chosen to be there this is a safe place to be. However I think there is also the suggestion that their presence suggests only a limited period of safety, not that the characters can relax and think they have finished their mission. A cat appears climbing up Theo's leg in the farmhouse after Julian is killed, and the image of it clawing its way up Theo's leg and his slight 'ouch' is followed by the scene when he overhears the conversation that makes it necessary to escape what had seemed to be their friends in the group.

Another cat appears in the Bexhill ghetto, and watches the tanks rolling by in the street below with Theo as Kee manages to briefly relax and enjoy feeding her daughter for the first time.

I also thought the Jarvis Cocker song at the end of the film was very funny! I didn't think the 'c' word was allowed to be spoken, let alone sung with anger, in a 15-rated film. Did the bbfc change their policy, let it by as a special case, or are their examiners like most of the public and don't bother to watch the end credits?

[Magic Hate Ball]

A word on the ending: Did anyone else find the transition to the credits incredibly unfitting? A sudden cut to black, children's voices, then a really loud and jangly John Lennon song. It pulled me out of any trance that the film had put me in. I can't be the only person who thinks a fade to black and just the children's voices would have been far more fitting...as it was, it felt like Cuaron was hitting you over the head and shouting, "SEE! SEE! THERE'S HOPE! JOHN LENNON SAYS SO!"

[tavernier]

A word on the ending: Did anyone else find the transition to the credits incredibly unfitting? A sudden cut to black, children's voices, then a really loud and jangly John Lennon song. It pulled me out of any trance that the film had put me in. I can't be the only person who thinks a fade to black and just the children's voices would have been far more fitting...as it was, it felt like Cuaron was hitting you over the head and shouting, "SEE! SEE! THERE'S HOPE! JOHN LENNON SAYS SO!"

Cuaron, hitting viewers over the head? Never!

[Magic Hate Ball]

Cuaron, hitting viewers over the head? Never!

Shock! Awe! The only Cuaron movies I've seen are Harry Potter number whatever and Children of Men, so obviously I don't know his track record very well.

[David Ehrenstein]

Then you must see his superb A Little Princess, closely followed by his awe-inspiringly great Y Tu Mama Tambien.