johnnyhongkong says…

We saw Children of Men this past weekend. It’s about a future in which the world has lost the global war on terror, humans have lost the ability to reproduce, and the new pharamcological solution to the thing that ails us is no longer Viagra, but a suicide pill.

It’s real uplifting stuff.

I’m serious.

Alfonso Cuaron is devastatingly successful at creating a dismal (and possible) vision of the future (or of the present in some places like Detroit or Iraq) and yet in this world full of death and desperation, Cuaron is also able to capture some of the most honest moments of hope and beauty that I’ve ever seen on film. Like when Japser (Michael Caine) taps a car window to say goodbye to one of the main characters, his eyes and his smile, full of hope. It just ruined me. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, it would have been manipulative.

And speaking of filmmaking, it is chock-full-o-nuts and by “nuts,” I mean wicked, bold, badass, go for broke, ten-ton filmmaking. Everybody’s talking about the two, long, single take sequences and they are great but the daring escape from the Fish compound, with nothing but the sound of wheels slowly rolling on grass, is nothing to shake a stick at (and if you don’t know Richard Beggs, the sound designer, you better ask someone).

And on another film nerd note, I wonder what it was like for cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to go from working with Terrence Malick, who is famously unfocused, on The New World, back to working with someone as focused as Cuaron has shown himself to be with Children of Men. Wandering minds don’t pull off sequences like the ones in his film.

According to the IMDB, Malick and Lubezki created a standard operating procedure for the photography of the The New World:

No artificial lights. All is shot in natural light.
No crane or dolly shots, just handheld or Steadicam shots.
Everything is shot in the subjective view.
All shots must be ‘deep-focus shots’, that is everything (foreground and background) is visible and focused.
You (the camera crew) are encouraged to go and shoot unexpected things that might happen in accident or if your instinct tells you so.
Selective shots: any shot that does not have visual strength is not used.

I’m wagering that “bacon taped onÂ a wall” fell within directive number 5…

Anyway before I totally fly off on a New World tangent, go check out Children of Men. It’s an important cautionary tale, it’s uplifting, and that Clive Owen is dreamy.