The Children of Men Thread

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well, he's had two of the best photographed films of the last couple years with this and The New World, but I hadn't realized he'd done all of Cuaron's films (as he's Mexican, not Eastern-Euro as one might guess) except the H. Potter. Cuaron talks about their style this time:

http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=384

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 21:26 (seventeen years ago) link

"What was fundamental for us in Children of Men was his work with Terrence Malick shooting The New World. Because then he was fearless about Children. In Malick's film, he didn't use any electric lights. Everything was source light, so he wanted to do the same thing with Children of Men. So he was adding, on top of creating the moment and registering the moment and not using montage, on top of that, there was only using available light. Chivo and I were very concerned about controlling and about trying to create that aesthetic."

That's not only ballsy (you can't easily re-shoot and time controls you more) but really hard.

― Michael White (Miguelito), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 21:33 (seventeen years ago) link

shades of Dogme 95

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 21:41 (seventeen years ago) link

well, the part where he says they made cuts in one sequence cuz otherwise ppl would think it was a rigid aesthetic is pretty anti-Dogme.

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 14:16 (seventeen years ago) link

right, I was just referring to the "only using available light" thing

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 16:47 (seventeen years ago) link

i think seitz is mostly right (which i only think about him occasionally). like, i mostly agree with this:

The movie felt less passionate and personal to me than Mad Max, Blade Runner, Brazil, Spielberg's War of the Worlds or the sleazy but fascinating 1975 midnight movie A Boy and His Dog

my exception would be war of the worlds, but i just don't understand spielberg cultists, so whatever.

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 18:53 (seventeen years ago) link

(and on balance i liked the movie more than he did, but i might have been hoping for less than he was; i was happy enough with its visceral impact, and while it doesn't really sustain emotional involvement there were moments that hit me pretty hard)

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 18:54 (seventeen years ago) link

I had never even heard of it before I went to see it. I had no idea who was in it or what it was about or anything.

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 18:58 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think this is playing here. :(

― JordanC (JordanC), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 18:59 (seventeen years ago) link

WotW passionate and personal?

― milo (milo), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah.

haha, most iconic and popular filmmaker of last 30 years has "cultists"

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:08 (seventeen years ago) link

Why is that a contradiction? Popular figures can't have cult-ish followers? Have you not met any Reaganites?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:46 (seventeen years ago) link

elvis fanatics?

― bohren un der club of gear (bohren un der club of gear), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Even better example.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:54 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah, I get it. We've had so many Spielberg klosterfucks just assume I'm going tongue-in-cheek on the topic in the future (you Melville cultist).

On Biblical and journo-contemporary imagery in COM (and interesting Cuaron comments in linked Cinematical interview on how Clive Owen is more of a writer on the film than 3 of those credited):

http://www.nakedgaze.com/2006/12/alfonso_cuarns_.html

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:55 (seventeen years ago) link

(by spielberg cultist i mean people who treat his mediocre "serious" movies like they're omg DEEP and his mediocre "action" films like they're...omg DEEP(allegories! soooo important!). closest siblings obviously being depalma cultists, with great overlap between the two. i blame pauline kael for the whole thing.)

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 21:51 (seventeen years ago) link

(i.e. a lot of the things msz sez about children of men goes in spades for minority report, a.i. and wotw.)

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 21:52 (seventeen years ago) link

really, really liked this -- in fact, want to see again. parts of it reminded me of 12 monkeys (especially when C.Owen gets abducted by the terrorists), and the reaction of the troops to the baby seemed a little too deus ex machina, but it just seemed to go by really quickly, and I was pretty into it the whole time. my ADD says that's a good reason to love a movie.

― Dominique (dleone), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:01 (seventeen years ago) link

For the record I think it is better than War of the Worlds (which I don't rate), A Boy and His Dog (which I do), and the original Bladerunner (which isn't as good as. . .), worse than Road Warrior (but better than Mad Max) and Blade Runner: The Director's Cut and just about on par with Brazil (which I guess I don't rate quite as highly as most.)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Kael hated his serious things! And was far more ambivalent about his achievements than not.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:07 (seventeen years ago) link

I think my favorite thing about it is that it made the future seem boring, or at least not all that different. No flying cars ... just fancier operating systems, different products, etc. There are pockets of newness, but also plenty of old stuff that no one bothered to try to improve on.

― Michael (Oakland Mike), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:15 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah i mean i blame kael for the depalma worship, which latter-day spielbergism seems derivative of.

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:16 (seventeen years ago) link

I loved how it turned London into a third world city, complete with tuk-tuks.

― Chap (chap), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link

you should read some of the positive reviews i've seen for 'the black dahlia'. why not only is it not bad, but it's a misunderstood masterpiece.

― bohren un der club of gear (bohren un der club of gear), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:20 (seventeen years ago) link

i might have mentioned how much i hated it before, possibly on ilx.

― bohren un der club of gear (bohren un der club of gear), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:20 (seventeen years ago) link

SHE LOOKS LIKE THAT DEAD GIRL!

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:21 (seventeen years ago) link

I still think the Dahlia dildo wasn't period-correct.

― milo (milo), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:26 (seventeen years ago) link

there's a joke in there somewhere

― bohren un der club of gear (bohren un der club of gear), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:29 (seventeen years ago) link

The movie needed another half hour which I would have gladly sat through. One of the best movies of the year and the half-life 2-ish scene was just astonishing. I have a love/hate thing with 90s literary sci-fi dystopias, but there was always hope amongst the resignation here.

― nuilxhollywood (nuilxhollywood), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:40 (seventeen years ago) link

I haven't seen Owen yet in anything else but Croupier and thought the hollowness/weariness was pretty impressive. Also, the Janet Leigh Effect with J. Moore shocks well.

closest siblings obviously being depalma cultists

haha, haven't you seen the fite-fites btwn Steven Cultist me and Brian Cultist Eric?

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:14 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah but that's like methodists and lutherans.

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:17 (seventeen years ago) link

the blood on the camera bit during that long shootout scene.. wow

― this is cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:24 (seventeen years ago) link

oh yeah that was a good touch. unplanned, i assumed. or maybe they just wanted me to think that.

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:26 (seventeen years ago) link

I really didn't like that. Up until that point, the suture was extremely effective and I found the blood jarring. After that, the film got a bit ridiculous with the baby and troops and then the boat. I never got back into it.

― coz larry (bundgee), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:33 (seventeen years ago) link

re: blood on the camera, there were a lot of moments when I didn't know if I was looking at something real or computer graphics (but the baby wasn't one of those times)

x-post

― Dominique (dleone), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:35 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah how did they do the birth scene?

― this is cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:36 (seventeen years ago) link

it was all filmed in reverse

― coz larry (bundgee), Wednesday, 3 January 2007 23:54 (seventeen years ago) link

eureka

― this is cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 4 January 2007 01:04 (seventeen years ago) link

More post-apocalyptic movies should have a running joke about cigarettes killing you quicker.

― milo (milo), Thursday, 4 January 2007 01:10 (seventeen years ago) link

The movie needed another half hour which I would have gladly sat through.

OTM

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Thursday, 4 January 2007 10:44 (seventeen years ago) link

No, no more unnecessarily long films please. I don't get Seitz bringing Brazil into the discussion, as aside from the dystopian settings they're about as diff in tone as you can get.

Yes, blood on lens was accident (it vanishes digitally later).

xpost

Ghettoizing Spielbergs into "serious" and not is as lazy as saying Scorsese is "back" bcz he made a superficial mob epic.

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 4 January 2007 14:15 (seventeen years ago) link

no, it's as lazy as saying "longer" = "unneccessary".

see, i could do this all day, just like you!

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Thursday, 4 January 2007 15:30 (seventeen years ago) link

well, it wd've been unnec in this case (I like some 9-hr films).

― Dr M (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 4 January 2007 15:45 (seventeen years ago) link

The film opens with a scene where detail about the world is filled in by a voice on a television, which is blown up in a terrorist attack (OR WAS IT etc). Cut to an office, where our hero is working in his joyless job, surrounded by joyless people. I seem to remember something specifically Brazil-like about the office his supervisor works in - towering piles of paper or somethin else that suggests work being done for basically no reason.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 4 January 2007 16:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Shoah?

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 4 January 2007 16:42 (seventeen years ago) link

(grr x-post)

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 4 January 2007 16:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Clive's boss lots less funny than Ian Holm

(adjourn to new board)

― Bill Weber (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 4 January 2007 17:21 (seventeen years ago) link

Ghettoizing Spielbergs into "serious" and not is as lazy as saying Scorsese is "back" bcz he made a superficial mob epic.

spielberg has very self-consciously bifurcated his own career that way (hence the scare quotes), at least post-E.T. i'm in the boring subgroup that thinks he made all his best movies before E.T. anyway, so i don't really care whether the later ones are "serious" or not. (and fwiw, i haven't seen munich because nothing else he's done has made me think omg i have to see munich. but i will eventually.)

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 4 January 2007 18:42 (seventeen years ago) link

(in fact i just added munich to my netflix AND bumped it up to #5. my expectations aren't too high, so maybe it'll surpass them.)

― tipsy mothra (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 4 January 2007 18:47 (seventeen years ago) link

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