Children of Men & Elf Sex

Blown away by this very moving film the other night. I have avoided it for a long time because I really didn’t want to subject myself to an apocalyptic jaunt in hopelessness. Yes, it was apocalyptic. Yes it was something of a road movie. Yes, there was a sense of hopelessness. But what moved me was that in the depth of loss, when all things appeared to reach their end and destruction consumed all, the awe and humility of the human race reached out. I can’t give anything away because I want you to see this film, but in light of trying to assess what this film is all about, I think the most clarity was in the beautiful portrayal of hope that is constructed in this film. The human response to innocence and frailty came across as natural and innate. And then as suddenly as it appear it vanished as War exhaled.

Philip French in his review of the film published in the Guardian (Sunday September 24, 2006), made this great observation;

“In his great essay 'The Crack-Up', written at a personal low ebb in 1936, Scott Fitzgerald said: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/screen/story/0,,1879569,00.html

I need to also point out that Alfonso Cuaron, the director of this film has received accolades for a couple of set pieces that are breathtaking in their realisation. I’m referring to a couple of lengthy sequence that are shot without any cut, creating fluidity and beauty – (nothing like Russian Ark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark of course but then I think Russian Ark suffers because the director goes to extremes with that feature, something like 90minutes all shot in one take, but I do realise that it is an amazing feat and needs to be seen on account of this – so please watch this film as well)

If you will forgive me for taking another tangential turn this idea reminds me of a quote referring to the creator of Lord of the Rings J.R.R Tolkien who spoke of giving up hope as a sin. I can’t remember which doco this was in – I suspect it was in the Two Towers special features because it examined the battle at Helm’s Deep where Legolas despairs of surviving the Battle and then gets a bitch slappin’ from Aragorn. Tolkien, through Aragorn, regarded the loss of hope as a sin because we cannot presume to know the future, giving up supposes we know the outcome, and none of us knows how things will turn out. By the way in trying to remember the name of Legolas I stumbled upon this article on Elf sex…. There’s Nerds, Geeks and then something so extreme that I don’t think they see the light of day.

I think there is freedom in being free from death. I am not talking about embracing death, or giving up on life, but having faith in something beyond yourself that doesn’t require that things necessarily work out in your way or in your favor. A message out of favor in the contemporary media (except, perhaps in the work of Alfonso Cuaron – incidentally I think it is the reason why a lot of people didn’t like the film) but present in some of the greatest teachings throughout history. It is a hope that calls us to deny ourselves and set our eyes on a road that isn’t all about us.