Children Of Men

[Pubrick]

I haven't had time to read all the interviews, but does ANYONE talk about the amazingly long/impossible shot inside of the car?? I thought that was the long take everyone was talking about, it's pretty incredible and kinda took me out of the moment due to its technical virtuoso.

that's all they talk about in the interviews.

[MacGuffin]

I haven't had time to read all the interviews, but does ANYONE talk about the amazingly long/impossible shot inside of the car??

It's as if the Times heard you:


It was 'all or nothing'
Cuarón and Lubezki filmed 'Children's' tough chase scene without breaking their rules.
Source: Los Angeles Times



Here was the challenge director Alfonso Cuarón posed to his longtime cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, when the two were filming "Children of Men": Cuarón wanted to cover 12 script pages in one continuous take from inside a compact Fiat Multipla stuffed with five passengers trying to flee terrorist assailants on motorcycles.

It's sort of a high-stakes game between the two. For each movie they make, they draw up the film's rules of engagement, vowing to carry out what Lubezki describes as "intricate cinematic codas," no matter how difficult.

"When I work with Cuarón, we make radical decisions about how we're going to shoot," Lubezki says. "It's all or nothing, according to strict rules we create for ourselves."

The director and cinematographer — former film school classmates in Mexico City — have held fast to these self-made doctrines for the past two decades.

"While we're shooting, we're always suffering," Lubezki says. "At some point, I say to myself, 'Oh, my God. What am I doing? This is a soap opera.' "

And so the soap opera of the Fiat unfolded on a road under cloudy skies, which meant the exteriors were five times brighter than the inside of the darkened car, making it difficult to photograph both without over-or- underexposing the shots. Not to mention the difficulty of fitting a camera and operator into the car to film each of the five actors in close up, Lubezki adds.

"I said, 'Cuarón, this is practically impossible to do,' " Lubezki recalls. " 'You really have to let me think about this shot.' "

They had just a month before they had to shoot the scene, which "sounds like a long time, but it's not for this type of complicated setup," he says. "It's like trying to build a building in a week with a number of unknowns."

First, Lubezki and his camera department attempted a standard car rig.

"One of the rules for us is always try to keep it simple and if you can't ..., go from there," he says.

When the easy-does-it approach didn't work, he and Cuarón tried to figure a way to re-create the whole sequence digitally.

But even the CG-savvy director of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and the cinematographer behind "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" were unable to figure out a way to simply shoot the actors against green screen and then later insert photographic backgrounds without racking up an enormous visual-effects bill and adding days to the postproduction schedule.

Besides, a laborious digital approach would have broken their own rules: Try to shoot on location. Try not to light it. Shoot with the lead actors and with real backgrounds.

With just three weeks before filming of the four-day sequence was to start, Lubezki called Doggicam Systems' Gary Thieltges, a Los Angeles-based camera-rig guru.

They removed the car roof and installed a rail system that allowed the camera to operate on a two-axis grid, controlled by a joystick. Lubezki, his focus puller and a dolly grip sat above the actors in an enclosed translucent loft. The car seats were modified so the actors could use levers to tilt and lower themselves out of the camera's path as it zoomed in and out.

The result is a remarkably intense chase scene in which the claustrophobic fear of the passengers in the car is palpable.

Still in the exhaustion of the moment, the cinematographer imagined breaking the rules or dropping the shot: "If I was directing 'Children of Men,' it may have been, 'You know something? This scene is too hard and it's getting too expensive. Let's just cut it,' " Lubezki says. "That's why you need Cuarón. You need that energy."

[modage]

i've never been happier to be proven wrong.  this movie was AWESOME.

[grand theft sparrow]

This is one of the best films I have ever seen. 

I now understand why some folks refuse to waste their time watching even marginally sub-par work.  I just got home from seeing this and I'm ready to sell half my DVD collection because it just doesn't make the nut.  I don't think that the quality of a film (both the story being told and the execution of the storytelling) has ever had such an impact on me.  This is what Hollywood should be making every time out.  My only hope is that the marketing department at Universal makes TV spots with enough explosions in them to trick people who wouldn't otherwise go see it into seeing it.  That and that it holds up with repeat viewings, which I anticipate it will.

It's likely that I will get into a fight in the next couple of months over this movie.

[MacGuffin]

Emmanuel Lubezki, 'Children of Men'
Source: Variety

Awards: Three-time Oscar nominee; three-time Mexican Ariel winner; won the Venice Film Fest's Golden Osella and the Los Angeles film crix prize for "Children of Men."

Tools: Lubezki opted for the lightweight Arricam LT, which allowed him to maneuver easily, and shot the entire pic on Kodak 5229, based on early tests for the audacious car sequence. "I needed a stock that you could expose for the interior and still have information outside," he says.

Aesthetic: Instead of glamorizing the violence in director Alfonso Cuaron's grim near-future vision of Britain, Lubezki follows the action like an objective reporter. Each of the movie's big set pieces is contained within a single unbroken take, the longest one running nearly eight minutes. "The camera goes in and tries to find the moments, the way you would if you were in the middle of a war with a camera on your shoulder," says Lubezki. His gaze occasionally drifts away from the main characters to capture "what Cuaron called 'the state of things,' what's happening around the characters, how the world is collapsing," an approach they first tried on "Y tu mama tambien."

Visual references: Considered a carefully designed Kubrickian approach, but opted for the more immersive handheld style instead. "We were prepping the movie after the (July) bombings in London," Lubezki says. "The real direct references were a lot of press and documentaries about the war in Iraq and what's going on in Lebanon."

Challenges: Rehearsing each of the action scenes, while remaining open to things that didn't go as planned. "You don't want to have a guy fall in front of a tank because you'd make a tortilla," jokes Lubezki. Trickiest sequence was Clive Owen's farmhouse escape, when he rolls the car down the hill as dawn is breaking. Lubezki shot it in reverse order over several nights at dusk, timing each segment precisely to get the lighting right.

What's next: Completely burned out after "Children of Men," Lubezki took a year off. "I've been spending time with my family, waiting for someone to call," he says.

[abuck1220]

WOW LONG SHOTS!  What is that?  That's NEVER been done before.

i'm assuming you hadn't seen the movie when you wrote this, because that shit was amazing. probably the most technically impressive movie i've ever seen.

[pete]

yeah, you're right, and I'm a big fan of lubezki.  I was mocking the article though, not the movie.

[matt35mm]

I also have to say that this was, in many ways, one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen.  It works beautifully on all levels, but I can't remember being more flat-out amazed by a movie.  That, yes, is due to the technical mastery on display here, which is used wisely, I feel.  With all of the hype surrounding some of the shots (two shots in particular), I'm happy to report that, one, they surpassed the hype for me, and two, they were entirely appropriate to the story.

Beyond that, I found the film to be very solid.  This might be my favorite of the year.  Cuaron has been one of my favorites for a long time, and he continues to impress.  This film had me scared, shocked, amazed (as I said earlier), angry, tensed, and teary.

So yeah, I liked it.

[A Matter Of Chance]

I think Cuarón and Lubezki deserve a lot of praise, not only for technical virtuoso reminiscent of 'the thin red line', but for stripping any sensationalism whatsoever from their film. I absolutely loved the fluid, natural way the story infolded. Cuarón definitely got a chance to show how much he trusts his audience, foregoing the clunky, expository dialogue that could have ruined this in the hands of another potential director.

I also thought Clive Owen was great. Cheers all around for this one: 

[MacGuffin]

Sounds to match to the 'Children of Men' vision
Rather than start-to-end scoring, director Alfonso Cuarón mixes a variety of music genres and sound effects.
Source: Los Angeles Times

CRITICS have rightly lauded the dynamic visuals of "Children of Men," citing the work of director Alfonso Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. In depicting the story's breakneck action through the totalitarianism and decay of 2027 Britain, the filmmakers have created a vision of the not-so-distant future that is both alien and terrifyingly familiar.

Similarly perceptive is Cuarón's use of sound — especially music — in delineating a world where Britain appears to be the last society standing, immigrants are caged or forced into refugee encampments and a baby has not been born in 18 years. Eschewing a traditional score, the director combines rock, pop, hip-hop and classical pieces to create one of the most unconventional cinematic soundscapes in recent memory.

The music is used inventively and sparingly, saving us from the wall-to-wall scoring that plagues so many films and providing the film's protagonist, Theo — an activist turned minor bureaucrat, played by Clive Owen — with a sonic path through London, East Sussex and Kent. Burned out and alcoholic, Theo is appalled at the state of things when he is drawn into the plans of a radical group seeking rights for immigrants, headed by a former paramour (Julianne Moore).

The movie's London is a bustling police state in which people still stop off for coffee on their way to work but must pass through checkpoints and barricades to do so. Cuarón mixes the sounds of traffic, barking dogs and a narcotized stream of media messages (including ads for a state-sanctioned suicide kit) with grimy hip-hop dubs to create an urban audio rumble.

Outside the city, life appears serene — save for the marauding hordes, who have a penchant for ambushing passersby, and the piles of burning cattle corpses. Theo takes the train to visit his old friend Jasper (Michael Caine), a former political cartoonist who lives with his comatose wife (it's indicated that she's the victim of terrorism) in a secluded house where he grows gourmet pot. He's an old-time hippie with long hair, leftist politics and John Lennon glasses, and his car radio blasts Deep Purple's "Hush." In the context of the movie, the song becomes a sly lullaby for a world without babies. Cuarón later repeats this suggestion of an empty lullaby with his prominent placement of King Crimson's "The Court of the Crimson King" ("... three lullabies in an ancient tongue").

It's not surprising that Jasper would be fond of classic rock, and twice at his home we hear a melancholy cover of the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday." Sung by Italian songwriter Franco Battiato, it underlines Jasper's sympathies and foreshadows the cacophony of accents heard later at a refugee camp.

In the film's second half, Cuarón uses less pop music and relies more heavily on augmenting silence with jarring sound effects — the burst of automatic weapons fire, say, or the squawk of loudspeakers ordering fugees, as illegal immigrants are called, through a maze of cages. The coastal town of Bexhill, transformed into a giant refugee camp that operates as a Third World city with a black market economy, is chaotic and troubling. Into the anarchy, Cuarón injects classical works by Handel and Mahler as well as "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" (1959-1961) by Krystof Penderecki.

The thread that holds this crazy quilt of sounds together is British composer John Tavener's "Fragments of a Prayer," a 15-minute commissioned piece that Cuarón envisioned as "a spiritual comment rather than a narrative support." Tavener wrote it based on the screenplay, in contrast to the traditional method of scoring to a film's images.

The director initially introduces the piece after a tragedy and then strategically places segments throughout the film, developing it as a motif. A sacred entreaty with recurring hallelujahs, it features mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and powerfully reinforces the idea of faith defying the blind malevolence of chance. By the end of Theo's journey, the theme has built to a complex emotional level that coincides with the film's climax.

After a provocative ending that keeps audiences in their seats for the credits, "Children of Men" continues to reward aurally, finishing strongly with two politically pointed songs. Leaving us with Lennon singing the anti-nationalist rant "Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)" and Jarvis Cocker declaiming global society's ills with an unprintable refrain in "Running the World," Cuarón emphasizes the timelessness of this future-set film and stamps it with a humanistic double exclamation point.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

I really did enjoy the visual aspect of the action scenes, these were nicely done and kept interest in the movie.
But overall, I wasn't too keen on the film. It's kind of discouraging to say this when most of you absolutely love it, however, as far as the story goes I wasn't as involved and maybe that's why. I think it relies so much on the audience buying the concept of such a doomed fate for man kind (where everything is a series of misfortunate events)... but visually it was great. And that's part of good film-making I suppose.

[RegularKarate]

Yes, I enjoyed the movie.. it might even make my top ten list, but I was hoping for more after all the rave reviews you guys have posted.

A few too many cliches and a bit too slow in parts, but overall very enjoyable.
"The Shot": while I was expecting it, still made me comment out loud twice (I think I said "SHIT!" and "that was awesome"... I say dumb shit when I'm dumb founded).

One thing about it is that it's haunting me...  the more I think about it, the more I want to see it again.

[Sunrise]

I saw this Friday night and again yesterday afternoon. I was affected more emotionally by Children of Men than it appears many of the previous posters. Most of this comes from the ultimate sense of hope Cuaron has crafted. He offers that something exists, in our current world even, that may be able to unite languages, religions and politics, overturn apathy and even bring armies to an utter standstill (if only temporarily). I do not believe his goal was a specific answer, but rather to shed light on the idea of such a possibility.

The technical brilliance of Children of Men is unquestioned, but I was never taken out of the film and on more than one occasion I found myself holding my breath and forgetting to blink. The audacity of the shots pales in comparison to how well they service the film. Please...please see this...as soon as possible. If you've seen it already, go again.

[samsong]

i'm going with pubrick on this one and NOT going to say it's the best movie i've ever seen or that it is uninhibitedly awesome, because it isn't.  outside of the technical achievement and a moment towards the end, this is a disappointingly flaccid film, one that seems like it was written by kids in middle school for an assignment where they had to imagine some sort of dystopia.  cuaron makes the most out of very little--the scenes everyone talks about are really amazing--but the film suffers from the all too common among film students, there's-more-in-the-filmmaker's-head-that-isn't-on-screen, and the wow factor can only carry for so long.

[Pubrick]

...and the fat bitch is worthless.