|
|
|
|
| Google |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Children of Men: The Most Important Movie After March 20, 2003
|
|
 email Michael Z.
 email this story
 print
|
Alfonso Cuaron's latest picture Children of Men about a dystopian future where global infertility leads to government collapse is not important because it delivers a strong political message (there isn't one), has something profound to say about human nature (it doesn't), but because of one nine-minute long climactic battle scene taking place in the war-torn, rubbled streets of an English port city.
The scene, which has been digitally blended to give it the appearance of being shot continuously and unedited, captures a battle between government military forces and a guerilla insurgents fighting for political recognition.
For those nine uninterrupted minutes, Cuaron envelops the audience in a first-person, experiential perspective of urban combat, much the same way that the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan placed movie-goers into the chaos of D-Day.
While following the protagonist, Clive Owen, through the carnage, one cannot help but think to themselves: This is what Iraq must be like.
Owen darts through city streets, strafed by small arms fire. Insurgents pop out from around a corner to ambush a military platoon.
The military counterattacks by sending in a tank.
The tank is destroyed by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Another tank fires on the squad that launched the RPG.
Fighters retreat into buildings, where they're surrounded by military troops.
Air support is called in to bomb the insurgent strong holds.
We've heard reports of the fighting, read accounts, and seen clips of explosions through shaky handheld cameras or military infra-red scopes, but there is no coherent footage of urban combat up to par with the quality of coverage Cuaron has created.
After all, what cameraman in their right mind would stand in the middle of a war zone to take a pan shot of the crossfire?
Cuaron's scene very literally gives us, for the first time, a visual template by which to understand our engagement in Iraq.
This is important, because when we send our military to fight, we should, as citizens, understand what we're sending them into.
Moreoever, we should, as citizens understand what kind of world our military will create.
In so many words, we owe it to ourselves, as decent human beings, to understand the consequences of our actions.
While the rest of Children is as thematically bare as it is cinematographically brilliant, this one nine-minute scene of insurgent combat is as an important cutout of our real world as has been made in the last four years. |
|
|
|
|
Reader Comments
|
|
|
post comment
|
|
