Movie Night: Children of Men

A few quick observations on last week's movie, Children of Men:

1)  Man, there are a lot of animals in that movie.  I mean, there are animals in literally every scene.  A rundown: Children of Men features dogs (lots of 'em), cats (climbing up Clive Owen's legs), zebras, camels, ostriches, a flying pig, a wild deer, more dogs, more cats, cows, goats, horses, cow corpses, a pig corpse...lots of animals.  It must have been literal hell for the producers of the film: really?  A zebra and a camel for the background of a single shot?  Why?

Well, I suppose the conventional reading would be that in a world without children, animals become fitting substitutes, accepting the love and nurturing that we, as people, want to give.  But the wrinkle in that reading is the stark and upsetting vision the movie casts of humanity: without hope for a future, men and women are themselves animalistic, destroying the arts (hence Danny Huston's "art ark"), killing one another in droves, wrecking cityscapes and (in one advertisement in the film) destroying entire countries.  Why would compassion redirect itself towards animals?  What hope do they offer anyone?

There's also the issue of rebellion organizations in the film.  Julianne Moore's character is the acting leader of the "Fishes," a terrorist cell seeking equal rights for "Fujis," or illegal immigrants (or, more accurately, refugees).  The name of the group isn't an acronym, nor is it incidental: in one scene, a cell member explains to Clive Owen's character that his wife is a "cod"--an "English fish."  The Fishes also hide out on an old farm, and in one critical scene, Clive Owen's character finds out exactly what he's committed to in a barn, where the film's female lead stands naked in the midst of a dairy cow pen.  The message is confusing: is this girl actually cattle?  She seems worried about this, as her comments about the mutilation of cow udders to "fit the machines" hints.  But then again, maybe that's the whole thing: maybe the problem isn't animals, it's the subordination of animals to the causes and desires of human beings.  In that sense, the udder comments make a lot of sense: almost intuitively, the girl realizes that she is not being cared for by the Fishes, she is being used by them: first, as a vessel for her unborn child, and second, as a kind of "flag-bearer," whose body is a symbol for an otherwise absent God's implicit blessing of their particular political cause.

I suppose what I'm suggesting is that the animal imagery seems truly ambivalent: animals are, in a sense, surrogate children in this film, receiving the lost affections of mothers and fathers who are otherwise unable to love something young; however, animals are also instrumentalized over and over again, their bodies taken and used as emblems and symbols for groups with little or no interest in their value.  It's an interesting paradox in the film--and one that begs a retitling of this post: "Is Children of Men the First 'Veganist' Film in Hollywood?"

2) Children of Men is a master class on direction.  Cuaron isn't just telling a story with a camera here, he is making a complete and well-wrought film.  His decisions in this movie--the animals, the tone, the casting of Clive Owen, the unbelievable long tracking shots--are of paramount importance to the film's vision of humanity.  The long tracking shots are a perfect example of this point: whereas one could imagine a thousand easier and similarly effective ways to film the major action sequences of the film, Cuaron's decision to film the biggest action set pieces in two long, single shots produces an almost unbearable sense of tension and dread.  By removing the cuts, Cuaron takes away our ability to "breath" as we watch the scene unfold, and as a result, the sense of peril in these sequences becomes truly, smotheringly real.  Adding to this is Cuaron's decision to keep Owen's character barefoot for the vast majority of the film: not only does Clive never pick up a gun or even threaten another character (he does, of course, smash one guy's face in with a car battery, but in many ways, that's different), he is consistently under the very tangible threat of death.  His shoeless feet give this a sickening gravity: he is unequipped for the conflicts he is a part of, and his life (and our window into the film) is constantly on the verge of being lost.

I suggest a sort of Litmus test for people who have seen the film: imagine the script.  It's an interesting concept, right?  A world without children; one man has to escort the first child born in 18  years to a secret medical ship in international waters to avoid that child's (mis)use as a politcal symbol?  It's great.  But here's the trick: imagine, for a moment, how different this movie would be if it had been given to Michael Bay.  Zach Snyder.  Steven Spielberg.  Ron Howard.  I'll tell you this much: Clive Owen would have found shoes, and in them, (more than likely) two matching handguns with pearl-inlay on the grips.  There's no way any of those directors would have made the decisions Cuaron did--to leave his hero out of the action; to give his characters room for self-sacrifice; to allow his shots to breath for 4, 5, even 7 minutes without a cut or (except in the rarest cases) an explosion.  The movie would have looked different, and as a result, I think it would have been weaker.

To sum that up, Children of Men is the perfect movie to watch if you want to think about what it means to direct a film...and how that job is different than simply framing shots and overseeing an editor in an editing bay.  With Children of Men, Cuaron announced himself as a true talent capable of a complex, inviting, powerful, and excellent film.  If you want to see a direct doing his job unbelievably well, watch this movie.

3) Children of Men has a natural companion piece, if you're interested in branching out, in District 9 (2009).  Both films deal with the last issue I want to raise here (and only raise--I'm running out of space): the need to reach a sensible balance between Homeland Security operations and human compassion.  More specifically, both films deal explicitly with immigration issues, and in both cases, a government defends itself from global chaos by turning away or locking up people/aliens who are simply seeking asylum.  I don't know what to make of this in this film, but I wanted to introduce it as a topic: are these reasonable portraits of the immigration issue?  How can we balance our responsibilities toward the least of these and our need to keep our nations and the values they stand for strong and consistent?  Where is the line in the sand, so to speak, between selfishness and self-preservation?  I honestly don't know the answer to that, but I think it's worth thinking about.  Also, if District 9 only stokes the fire, it's worth watching or reading The Road--it's take on this issue is perhaps the most clear and poignant.

4) The future loves Banksy, even if the Academy doesn't.  Notice that one of Banksy's works--a graffiti painting of two male British police officers hugging and kissing one another--is in the foyer of the "Art Ark," just before we see Michelangelo's David and Picasso's Guernica.  No Future, indeed.