Children of Men
I saw Children of Men last night. It was pretty damn good. It nailed the dystopia angle perfectly. It had an accurate version of what the future would be like following the decay of the majority of human civilization. There’s a little bit of technological improvement, like heads-ups display in automobiles (”Collision Warning”), bus-length LCD panels that display animated ads, and improved computers. But the rest of the world really isn’t that different, and the special effects of the technology are so well-integrated into the environment that they feel real, not like just some high tech effects designed to elicit a “Wow, cool” response.
The movie depicts a very authoritarian police-state Britain, in which refugees from the global catastrophe are constantly streaming in, with some being rounded up, placed in cages, tortured, executed, etc. It was somber, disillusioning, and depressing, but what’s really disheartening is how close to the mark it all was. Judging by the current direction the United States is going in, what with the extraordinary rendition, secret torture camps, and indefinite imprisonment of American citizens without charges, I could see this becoming reality much sooner than the late 2020s.
Children of Men is more of a flight movie than a fight movie. The main character never uses a weapon (unless the car battery counts), and he only fights back when his life is in immediate danger. Other than he’s just running, running, running, whether it be on foot, by car, or by sea. There is lots of fighting going on in this movie, including an especially well-done urban battle, but it’s happening to the main characters; they aren’t really fighting themselves. The battle is more like dystopian scenery, with the leading characters wanting to do nothing more than escape.
I’m starting to hate the Oscar Awards, too. They’re such a dominant force in the movies industry that almost all of the good films these days are coming out in the short pre-Oscars period starting at around Christmas. Which leaves about ten months of the year utterly devoid of good movies. Children of Men is a great film, and so are lots of the others coming out right around now, but I wish they were more spread out through the entire year. Summer movies are dreck.
