Alfonso Cuarón just won best director, as well
as a slew of other awards for Gravity and
while I applaud gravity and its overt style, I can’t help but feel like the
academy overlooked a real masterpiece 8 years ago, by the same director. So
here it is, not a review, but why I love Children
of Men. I’m going to really try to avoid spoilers here, mainly because I
think this movie knocks it out of the park on every level of dramatic
structure, and really should be seen with little knowledge on its subject
matter.
Children
of Men works as a strange conduit for portraying how individuals play their
roles in society. It addresses futility in change, consequences of apathy, and
maternity. The performances are out of this world (seriously, I’ve never seen
Michael Cane in a better role). The “near future” look holds up on a level
similar to Blade Runner. And let me
just say, if there’s a film in recent memory that utilizes cinematography to
hammer in a theme, it’s Children of Men.
Emmanuel
Lubezki was also just recognized for Gravity
and holy hell it’s about time. There are no fancy cuts, oblique angles, and
very few shot, reverse shots. Instead, Lubezki rides the line between fluid
shots and traditional static shots, equalizing the audience with Theo. Let me
explain. As you watch the movie you are given very little information that the
main character is not privy to. This gives it a very realistic approach and
allows Cuaron to blindside the audience with beat after beat, until Theo’s
struggles feel like problems they have to deal with. The cinematography is so
important to this approach because you have to immerse the audience in such a
way that when you make a point, it’s as to the audience as it is to the
affected characters, and Children of Men does
this brilliantly. I promised very few spoilers and I’ll keep that promise. In
the opening scene of the film, Theo gets coffee from a café, everyone inside is
transfixed on the horrific events of that morning and Theo apathetically gets
his coffee and leaves, the camera follows him outside and down the block, as
Theo adds some alcohol to his brew, the building behind him explodes, there are
zero visible cuts during the scene. What’s so well, functional about an opening
like this is it manages to introduce the premise (no children born since 2009),
the main character, and the central conflict of the film all in the first two
minutes, and without cutting (visibly).
A quick
word on fluid shots (aka “tracking shots”). You may be wondering why I keep
saying “invisible cuts” or things of that nature. Children of Men fooled me for a very long time into thinking that
the fluid shots of the film (there are several of them) were all glorious “tracking
shots”. That’s how good these guys are, they are masters of the invisible edit
and honestly, the film doesn’t suffer in my mind for knowing that. At the time
these shots drew a lot of comparisons with the “tracking shot” in Atonement, and how the latter had the
longer shot and was therefore more impressive. Here’s the problem with that
sort of thinking. While on a technical scale the Atonement shot was very impressive, it did little to reinforce the
conceit of the film. The shot takes place while Robbie is in the army and has
little to do with the theme of redemption, or the inciting incident of
miscommunication. It is a masterfully executed scene, but watching it alone
would give the audience no understanding of the theme of the film. In Children of Men every fluid shot tells
us something about Theo, the audience follows him through his journey through
hell and in every shot we can see his driving goal, and the constant danger he
is in while attempting to achieve that goal. The shots are used to set the tone
and define the movie. They don’t stand out from the rest of the movie because
each one subtly reinforces the theme and gives the audience a realistic perspective
of the consequences of activism.
I know I
made a promise to stay spoiler free, but I just can’t fully explain my
appreciation of this film without touching on one more thing, so if you have
not yet seen Children of Men, I recommend
you stop reading here. As I said before this is a movie about individualism and
how it plays out in changing society. Theo being the audience is subjected to
the two extremes and one median of the spectrum through Luke, Julian and
Jasper. Luke is 100% activist, leader of the resistance and willing to pay any
price to institute political change. Jasper is a pacifist who just want to let
the world’s problems play out around him. Julian rides the line between social
change at all cost and morality’s absence in the world she lives in. And all
paths lead to their deaths. There is a beautiful truth in that no matter what
reasoning you align with, the world changes, and every action has its
consequences.
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Jake
