QUICK NOTE

Hey, just a reminder that I'm pushing back the first quiz to 9/18.

Election

Ok so not surprisingly there's not a lot of critical analysis of this film out there as far as I can tell. I did however find an interesting interview here with the director, Alexander Payne, from 1999 when the film was released.





I'm not posting it here in full because it doesn't really pertain too much to the discussion topic, but it might give you some insight for crafting your response.


Discussion Topic

Talk about who you believe to be the protagonist and antagonist in the film and tell us why you've come to this conclusion.

In my opinion, the "good guy/bad guy" roles are vague in the relationship between Tracy Flick and Jim McAllister, who are both extremely flawed in character.

Delay

Hey guys. Short delay on the blog post. I'm having computer problems. Should be up soon. Thanks for your patience peeps.

Children of Men

This is an excerpt from an interview done right as
the film was being released.

Here's the full text (http://www.cinematical.com/2006/12/25/interview-children-ofmen-director-alfonso-cuaron/)

Cinematical:
I want to talk about the visual design of the film. I've heard that
other people were pushing to give the fill a more futuristic look and
that you fought against that.

AC: (Alfonso Cuaron)
Well, it was not pushing, really, it was just -- you say, I'm going
to do a film that is set in 2027, and you have an art department that
gets so excited because, finally, they get to execute concept designs
that they've been dreaming to do, for all these futuristic buildings
and cars. And gadgets -- they had a lot of gadgets. But the fact is
that we didn't want to do a science fiction film.

In this movie, I told them, you unfortunately have to leave your
imagination outside. It's kind of like, you know, when you go to a
writer's workshop and you have the creative workshop? This film was
not the creative workshop, it was the essay workshop. It's not about
imagining and being creative, it is about referencing reality. So --
the cinematographer, he said that not a single frame of this film can
go by making a comment about the state of things. So everything became
about reference -- and not reference about what is around, like, oh,
I'm walking around, and this is what I saw on the street, but about
how this has relevance in the context of the state of things, of the
reality that we are living today.

And most of those things we tried to make references coming from the
media, referencing that they had become a part of human consciousness,
and that maybe we don't fully remember, but when you see it you
recognize something that rings true because you have seen it in
reality -- even if you don't really remember it consciously. And so
the exercise was to transcend not only reality, but also to
cross-reference within the film to the spiritual themes of the film.

So I will give you an example: They exit the Russian apartments, and
the next shot you see is this woman wailing, holding the body of her
son in her arms. This was a reference to a real photograph of a woman
holding the body of her son in the Balkans, crying with the corpse of
her son. It's very obvious that when the photographer captured that
photograph, he was referencing La Pieta, the Michelangelo sculpture of
Mary holding the corpse of Jesus. So: We have a reference to something
that really happened, in the Balkans, which is itself a reference to
the Michelangelo sculpture. At the same time, we use the sculpture of
David early on, which is also by Michelangelo, and we have of course
the whole reference to the Nativity. And so everything was referencing
and cross-referencing, as much as we could.


Discussion Topic: Cuaron, in the film, was making obvious political references to current events. How do you think setting the film in the near future and his deliberate use of "toned" down futuristic design (i.e. technology not much more advanced then our own) affected or emphasized the political themes of the film?