Rating: 
Admittedly a zygote of a review but a review nonetheless.
Here’s the thing: I wanted to love this film, and if there is a sub-genre I truly love it is dystopic future realism, and all parties involved in this film rate highly on my board of recognition (if I had one). I am wondering if I just was not in the mood, that all the variables of the experiences were against me, too saturated with Christmas chocolate and that layer of lazy that builds upon one around this time of the year… perhaps my mind was not fully operational, but I never quite connected with the film in the way I imagine the real me probably would have under optimal circumstances (how’s that for dissociative behaviour?).
I have been puzzling over how to review this film, and I just do not think I can, its like trying to review a film you watched and you dozed off halfway through. My eyes were open, but I felt like I was missing something, or maybe there really was nothing to miss, maybe Cuaron did an incredible job at making things seem more successful than they actually were. Certainly, the film has a cinematic presence. There is grit in the lens but goddamn it is beautiful in the way a Courbet painting is, all muddy colours that come to some aesthetic statement on the matter of the mundane. It makes no difference that this is the future, a Britain ‘soldiering on’ in the wake of devastation, it is the same grey sky damp living we have come to associate with the Isle, the future vision has been situated into the here and now with a sprinkle of the esoterc for good measure.
I enjoyed the pop cultural references in the imagery, I enjoyed the meandering quality to the narrative. It has quite possibly the funniest car chase I have ever seen, and I enjoyed this tongue in cheek blow-off to the genre… I enjoyed so many fragments, not least of all the two key set-pieces in the film: both lengthy one take cinematic excursions evoking some of the most effective uses of this technique (one a car chase, the other an embedded firsthand look at war). I enjoyed the precarious sense of jeopardy that carried throughout the film, there is dire suspense and then there is Cuaron’s rendering of dire suspense… a place where anything can and does happen.
I am almost talking myself into a five star love affair with the movie, but the reality is I had serious problems with the emotional payoff of the story, and most importantly with Clive Owen’s main character, Theo. The film could have been so much more if the peril that was unloaded on Theo and his gang of hopefuls was heightened by my vested interest in the characters, but not enough was done to earn that. One can still feel empathy for someone vying for survival, and any thriller can pull that feeling out without much trouble… but to make me feel the extra bit of emotion to truly care about these people as people, that was something I think was missing from the whole experience for me. It reminds me of another near-miss in this genre: Code 46… I share the same pleasure from watching a future vision rendered believably but the lack of charisma and chemistry between the two main characters in that film (Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins) left me coldly removed. Now I love Clive Owen, and there is something earned by his mere presence, but the story does not successfully mine his character for some real charisma and chemistry, he is little more that a catalyst for the action. He is also a bloke, and blokes don’t make great protagonists, it is hard to peer into their hearts, as they are usually so far concealed from the public.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a stunning film, it really has a vision to it and I could watch it over and over, but I wanted something more from it and it just wasn’t there. But there remains something wanton in me despite my nagging suspicion I missed something. To quote Radiohead, who plays prominently in the background of one scene: I Might Be Wrong.
6 Comments
Finally saw it this afternoon, and I must say I disagree. Besides finding this to be an incredibly important-feeling movie (it’s actual objective importance will hopefully be dissected in a Wikipedia article soon – linking all the little cultural hints from behind which the director was winking throughout the course of the movie) – I found this to be an incredibly REAL film, and this was partly due to the fact that there was no unnecessary bullshitting about the characters we follow throughout the movie. The “tell” that you’re not going to get more than glances at character insight happens with Owen breaknig down by the tree for a tick, and then composing himself and getting on with the task at hand. I was thinking after the movie was over – in moments of real trauma, nobody has the time to sit back and be emotional – circumstances usurp the importance of the psychology and the overall bigger picture is not supposedly the individuals making their way through a sea of contrary human action but the FUTURE they enact this struggle to uphold. It’s not even that the future has to be about something, but that it will be allowed to continue.
I was grateful for the absence of real psychological development, and for the fact that Theo injures his foot while running through the camp – that’s real. That he doesn’t nod or say anything in the final scene to justify or summarize the events makes the action that has unfolded, in my opinion, even more immediate and personal to the audience.
More on this – but the scene I think that may be the key to the issue of character psychology and how emotionally involved the audience is intended to be is probably the one with the kitty climbing Theo’s leg.
Great to see Peter Mullen in there! Made me want to stride right up and shake Sid/Mother Superior’s hand!
yeah but then what is the point of the fairly lengthy scene where Theo is listening to his friend tell the story of his son dying… that must have been there to make us feel something about this character yet it is not properly earned.
I am all for the triggering of explosions that propel the story faster then the characters can establish themselves, and that is two thirds of the film which is essentially a chase flick… but how much more rewarding that whole chase would be if, for example, we had more time to invest in the life of theo and his wife, perhaps through flashbacks or just prior to the action, a slow build to the action… I do not need to be told more than what is neccessary to make Theo dimensional, and I just do not feel he is dimensional in the film, he is a stock character in continual peril. Compare this with Spielberg’s War of the Worlds…
despite it being also two-thirds a chase movie, Cruise has a sufficiently portrayed back story, there are scenes to accentuate his character flaws and this becomes important when the world crashes around him and we feel his specific psychological distress throughout… Theo, on the otherhand, is a person who seems bored with life and there are some glimpses to who he is, and for example what his marriage consisted of (particularly in the car scene) but I needed more than that to feel the punch of the sequences to follow. His blokeness as a character and the choice made in the script to keep him the any man limits the impact of the film for me.
btw I have seen pan’s labyrinth and god willing will have a review of it coming.
Damnit. Pans is reserved for next weekend but I can hardly contain myself…
If your review is consistent with the other reviews I’ve read, you’d best be queuing up “The Devil’s Backbone” – del Toro’s 1st major project (after Cronos, which is queued for me)...
I liked this movie, but it had major problems. Obviously, one person’s holes are different from another person’s, and I often feel this makes it hard to discuss a film.
For instance, the car chase scene that Mike finds a tongue-in-cheek laugh was a bit jarring for me, because the contrived nature of whole scene took me out of the film’s imagined world and into the world of a bunch of actors and cameramen making a movie. I know all of us transition between these worlds frequently throughout a film, but at that moment I wasn’t pleased to do so. And when they didn’t shoot the tires…it just didn’t work for me.
Moreover, given how many individuals were killed on the way to the war siege scene, I personally experienced a lack of urgency. I’m thinking of doing on post on this idea of how a film has a kind of emotional economy within its narrative, and when too many people die it has the effect of inflation, and even adding more killing and terrifying circumstances become lacking in value.
I didn’t feel much of anything for these characters at any point, except for the very powerful scene when the baby was born, so I agree with Mike on that point. Now, when Theo hurts his foot running through the camp, which Perc highlights, does that scene belong in the same film as one with a wacky car chase? I liked the gesture, I suppose, but it was also something along the lines of “too little, too late.” The film seemed like it had decided not to be a real film, and then it changes its mind. Very soon after the whole army stops shooting and becomes mesmerized by the baby, seemingly forgetting there is a war going on, and then lets them run free? These kinds of things are inevitable when making films, but I thought this one could have been more consistent within its own logic.
I think they tried to shoot the tires and missed… I mean I dont know how easy it would be to do.
as for killing to many people ruining the emotional value of a film… c’mon… Commando was a colossal achievement of pathos even with its body count
What I liked about Children of Men was that no one was safe in Cuaron’s world… and he establishes this very early on, the first shot in fact. This is not a movie were explosions occur in the distance as mis-en-scene, this is embedded violence.
I can’t believe Nate and I agree on something
I really want to love this film… but I just admire it or parts of it.
Now if I can just convert you to gospel of Phil Collins, then we’ll be on to something…