Children of Men
I am telling you right now, without a trace of hyperbole, that Children of Men is the best movie I have seen in years. You need to see this.
I have babbled on and on in here about being a fangirl of dystopia. You all know of my girlboner for it. And admittedly, that was my main interest in the film going into it. Children of Men is so much more than just a really depressing story or exercise in depression though - it's ultimately the visual world that Cuarón created that makes this such a brilliant and affecting movie.
My brother and I were recently talking about ARGs (specifically Year Zero) and how engrossing they can be. We mainly discussed how the good ones succeed because of how they are presented. The best ARGs are supposed to blur the line of reality and make you wonder - if only momentarily - if what you're viewing is real or part of a story. A really good ARG is the best way I can describe Children of Men. Even though it's a movie and you can't participate in its story (outside of the passive way that you watch a movie), I have never seen something obscure the line of reality and fiction so well before.
Usually in movies set in the future, be they dystopian or not, you tend to see a Jetsons-like (Jetsonian?) world - flying cars, jet packs, laser guns...you know what I'm talking about. It's so artificial that you can never fully get lost in it. In Children of Men, Cuarón's 2027 looks like 2007, except a lot more worse for the wear. The people in this world still get to their jobs in busses and cars, they still get their morning coffee from a ridiculously overpriced coffee shop; but in this world, these people are also dealing with the crushing reality that humans are a species going extinct while also trying to cling to life in a civilization spiraling into nihilism. It's heavy stuff. You mix in a matter-of-fact, almost flippant view of violence and a cinematography style more like that of a war correspondent than a major motion picture, and you've got yourself an experience that's really fucking hard to separate yourself from for the duration. Intense is almost putting it mildly.
Strangely enough, there's actually a fair bit of humor, and hell, hope, to be had to balance the soul-crushing despair. At its heart the story is one of hope. And amazingly, despite this not being a happy movie (or even an enjoyable one - I mean, it was excellent but you don't come away from it thinking you had a fun time), it definitely succeeds in being ultimately hopeful. I can't say that I've seen anything quite like it.
I have babbled on and on in here about being a fangirl of dystopia. You all know of my girlboner for it. And admittedly, that was my main interest in the film going into it. Children of Men is so much more than just a really depressing story or exercise in depression though - it's ultimately the visual world that Cuarón created that makes this such a brilliant and affecting movie.
My brother and I were recently talking about ARGs (specifically Year Zero) and how engrossing they can be. We mainly discussed how the good ones succeed because of how they are presented. The best ARGs are supposed to blur the line of reality and make you wonder - if only momentarily - if what you're viewing is real or part of a story. A really good ARG is the best way I can describe Children of Men. Even though it's a movie and you can't participate in its story (outside of the passive way that you watch a movie), I have never seen something obscure the line of reality and fiction so well before.
Usually in movies set in the future, be they dystopian or not, you tend to see a Jetsons-like (Jetsonian?) world - flying cars, jet packs, laser guns...you know what I'm talking about. It's so artificial that you can never fully get lost in it. In Children of Men, Cuarón's 2027 looks like 2007, except a lot more worse for the wear. The people in this world still get to their jobs in busses and cars, they still get their morning coffee from a ridiculously overpriced coffee shop; but in this world, these people are also dealing with the crushing reality that humans are a species going extinct while also trying to cling to life in a civilization spiraling into nihilism. It's heavy stuff. You mix in a matter-of-fact, almost flippant view of violence and a cinematography style more like that of a war correspondent than a major motion picture, and you've got yourself an experience that's really fucking hard to separate yourself from for the duration. Intense is almost putting it mildly.
Strangely enough, there's actually a fair bit of humor, and hell, hope, to be had to balance the soul-crushing despair. At its heart the story is one of hope. And amazingly, despite this not being a happy movie (or even an enjoyable one - I mean, it was excellent but you don't come away from it thinking you had a fun time), it definitely succeeds in being ultimately hopeful. I can't say that I've seen anything quite like it.
