Dyspeptic Dystopia
After watching the film Children of Men, which opened here this past weekend, I turned to my fiancee Penny and commented that director Alphonzo Cuaron made England of the year 2029 look a lot like the United States will look about halfway through President George W. Bush's fourth term in office.
She just turned to me and said, "Don't even think that!" I knew from the tone of her voice that it wasn't my speaking ill of the president that distressed her.
As science fiction fans, the two of us make a point of seeing all of the science fiction films that come out -- or at least make it to theaters in Champaign. (This last point is worthy of its own screed on this blog and probably will get one sooner or later, but not tonight.) This policy means that we see some unbelievably great films and some real dogs. Children of Men fell somewhere in between.
Children of Men is representative of that vast subgenre within science fiction called dystopian fiction. This is where the author tries to come up with the most horrible future he or she could imagine and sets it to paper or celluloid, often as some sort of warning to the reader or viewer -- "if you keep letting this trend go on, this is what's gonna happen to you." There often is a little bit of preachiness to it, a bit like what your parents were always warning you about, but maybe a bit more serious than getting in an accident on a day when you have no clean underwear. 1984 is probably the number one example of dystopian fiction -- and also, incidentally, was made into a gut-wrenchingly powerful film back in the 1980s (appropriately enough) starring William Hurt and Richard Burton. (Richard Burton played the role of O'Brien, his last film before he died, made while he was dying of cancer -- you could sort of tell this, and it made the movie that much more terrifying to watch.)
Cuaron, who directed the most recent Harry Potter movie, chose to shoot the film with something like 60% to 80% of the color leached out of the stock during the developing process. This is a technique, pioneered in Saving Private Ryan, that I often object to, mainly because I like bright, loud, clashy colors. (That alone endeared Moulin Rouge to me.) In this case, though, it worked rather well with the tone of Children of Men, which was unrelentingly bleak and got bleaker by the minute. At some points it made me recall this large animal veterinarian magazine I used to get on a previous job -- you wound up being rather thankful that the autopsy photos of hogs that died of some bowel disorder were in black and white rather than color.
My rule of thumb is that if it's shown in the trailer, it's fair game for me to discuss without warning in the review. As is often the case, the trailer revealed too much of the plot in my opinion, but that's another issue. If you've seen the trailer, you know that the film is set in England in 2029, and worldwide, no children have been born since 2009 -- women have been universally infertile. In my more W.C. Fields-like moments, I'd say this sounds like paradise to me, but to novelist P.D. James, this is the stuff of dystopia, and in my more sober moments, I have to admit that he probably has a point. Life has become a bleak, hopeless existence for most people, and the world is falling apart. According to the film, England is that last place on earth where civilization hasn't collapsed, and you have to wonder whether or not the collapse of civilization might not be an improvement -- the country's residents are beset by an increasingly totalitarian and violent government on one hand, and a bunch of violent revolutionary terrorists. The government is mainly obsessed with protecting Britain from illegal aliens. Jake, the main character, is a former political activist who is now a nondescript civil servant (shades of 1984) who leads a depressing and dull life.
One day, Jake is kidnapped off the street by an ex-girlfriend who wants him to help someone get to the coast to be picked up by a boat from the Human Project, a maybe mythical group of scientists who are working to find a cure for the human race's infertility and ways to restore civilization. The person to be helped is an illegal alien, but more importantly, a pregnant woman.
The story goes on from there, and it doesn't reveal a whole lot to say that for virtually all of the characters, everything gets worse and worse, and just when you think things can't possibility get any worse than that, they get worse yet. (I have to say, that takes a certain amount of imagination from the screenplay writer -- maybe sick imagination, but imagination nonetheless.) This is not a movie to see when you're depressed to start with. Unlike some movies in the dystopian genre, most of the characters here are likeable or at least have some likeable aspects, which makes what happens to them all the harder to watch.
I particularly liked Sir Michael Caine, who played this old hippie friend of the main character who basically smoked a lot of marijuana and philosophied. Of course, such a character is usually destined for a bad end, even in much less gloomy movies, and he was no exception, and that was particularly hard to watch.
So we will see what happens, and half way through the fourth term of George W. Bush, we will know if I was right. If we're not all dead in unmarked graves in concentration camps by then.
She just turned to me and said, "Don't even think that!" I knew from the tone of her voice that it wasn't my speaking ill of the president that distressed her.
As science fiction fans, the two of us make a point of seeing all of the science fiction films that come out -- or at least make it to theaters in Champaign. (This last point is worthy of its own screed on this blog and probably will get one sooner or later, but not tonight.) This policy means that we see some unbelievably great films and some real dogs. Children of Men fell somewhere in between.
Children of Men is representative of that vast subgenre within science fiction called dystopian fiction. This is where the author tries to come up with the most horrible future he or she could imagine and sets it to paper or celluloid, often as some sort of warning to the reader or viewer -- "if you keep letting this trend go on, this is what's gonna happen to you." There often is a little bit of preachiness to it, a bit like what your parents were always warning you about, but maybe a bit more serious than getting in an accident on a day when you have no clean underwear. 1984 is probably the number one example of dystopian fiction -- and also, incidentally, was made into a gut-wrenchingly powerful film back in the 1980s (appropriately enough) starring William Hurt and Richard Burton. (Richard Burton played the role of O'Brien, his last film before he died, made while he was dying of cancer -- you could sort of tell this, and it made the movie that much more terrifying to watch.)
Cuaron, who directed the most recent Harry Potter movie, chose to shoot the film with something like 60% to 80% of the color leached out of the stock during the developing process. This is a technique, pioneered in Saving Private Ryan, that I often object to, mainly because I like bright, loud, clashy colors. (That alone endeared Moulin Rouge to me.) In this case, though, it worked rather well with the tone of Children of Men, which was unrelentingly bleak and got bleaker by the minute. At some points it made me recall this large animal veterinarian magazine I used to get on a previous job -- you wound up being rather thankful that the autopsy photos of hogs that died of some bowel disorder were in black and white rather than color.
My rule of thumb is that if it's shown in the trailer, it's fair game for me to discuss without warning in the review. As is often the case, the trailer revealed too much of the plot in my opinion, but that's another issue. If you've seen the trailer, you know that the film is set in England in 2029, and worldwide, no children have been born since 2009 -- women have been universally infertile. In my more W.C. Fields-like moments, I'd say this sounds like paradise to me, but to novelist P.D. James, this is the stuff of dystopia, and in my more sober moments, I have to admit that he probably has a point. Life has become a bleak, hopeless existence for most people, and the world is falling apart. According to the film, England is that last place on earth where civilization hasn't collapsed, and you have to wonder whether or not the collapse of civilization might not be an improvement -- the country's residents are beset by an increasingly totalitarian and violent government on one hand, and a bunch of violent revolutionary terrorists. The government is mainly obsessed with protecting Britain from illegal aliens. Jake, the main character, is a former political activist who is now a nondescript civil servant (shades of 1984) who leads a depressing and dull life.
One day, Jake is kidnapped off the street by an ex-girlfriend who wants him to help someone get to the coast to be picked up by a boat from the Human Project, a maybe mythical group of scientists who are working to find a cure for the human race's infertility and ways to restore civilization. The person to be helped is an illegal alien, but more importantly, a pregnant woman.
The story goes on from there, and it doesn't reveal a whole lot to say that for virtually all of the characters, everything gets worse and worse, and just when you think things can't possibility get any worse than that, they get worse yet. (I have to say, that takes a certain amount of imagination from the screenplay writer -- maybe sick imagination, but imagination nonetheless.) This is not a movie to see when you're depressed to start with. Unlike some movies in the dystopian genre, most of the characters here are likeable or at least have some likeable aspects, which makes what happens to them all the harder to watch.
I particularly liked Sir Michael Caine, who played this old hippie friend of the main character who basically smoked a lot of marijuana and philosophied. Of course, such a character is usually destined for a bad end, even in much less gloomy movies, and he was no exception, and that was particularly hard to watch.
So we will see what happens, and half way through the fourth term of George W. Bush, we will know if I was right. If we're not all dead in unmarked graves in concentration camps by then.
posted by Da Zedman at 10:15 PM
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