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Jacquelyn and I went to see a film at the university theatre last night.
If you have not seen Children of Men, please do so. Besides being terribly poignant, it is a damn fine piece of film. The acting, the direction, the sound, everything was especially top-notch. Alfonso Cuarón is definitely one of my favorite new filmmakers. Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine are all excellent. Clive, who my girlfriend drools over and has erotic dreams about, is amazing and I must grudgingly admit that while I've found him to be decent in the past, this movie puts him in a category I reserve only for the best.
In this film, most of the world has descended into chaos and war, where almost everywhere is like Baghdad right now. The violence was so stark and unapologetic, yet non-gratuitous. It was real, gritty and emotional. It reminds us of the ugliness of it all. Death and violence is not sympathetic, it's not pretty, and it's not romantic. You feel every cry and scream in your heart as if it were your own. The movie was so emotionally draining, I couldn't think or talk about anything else for hours. You walk out shell-shocked, as if you really just spent a few days in a war zone, literally dodging bullets. Many theatre goers were gasping and grasping on the edge of their seats. Again, literally.
Jacquelyn went to the restroom after the movie let out and I sat down at a table and I picked up a news paper and read this item by Thomas L. Friedman:
If you have not seen Children of Men, please do so. Besides being terribly poignant, it is a damn fine piece of film. The acting, the direction, the sound, everything was especially top-notch. Alfonso Cuarón is definitely one of my favorite new filmmakers. Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine are all excellent. Clive, who my girlfriend drools over and has erotic dreams about, is amazing and I must grudgingly admit that while I've found him to be decent in the past, this movie puts him in a category I reserve only for the best.
In this film, most of the world has descended into chaos and war, where almost everywhere is like Baghdad right now. The violence was so stark and unapologetic, yet non-gratuitous. It was real, gritty and emotional. It reminds us of the ugliness of it all. Death and violence is not sympathetic, it's not pretty, and it's not romantic. You feel every cry and scream in your heart as if it were your own. The movie was so emotionally draining, I couldn't think or talk about anything else for hours. You walk out shell-shocked, as if you really just spent a few days in a war zone, literally dodging bullets. Many theatre goers were gasping and grasping on the edge of their seats. Again, literally.
Jacquelyn went to the restroom after the movie let out and I sat down at a table and I picked up a news paper and read this item by Thomas L. Friedman:
On February 20th, the AP reported from Afghanistan that a suicide attacker disguised as a health worker blew himself up near "a crowd of about 150 people who had gathered for a ribbon cutting ceremony to open an emergency ward at the main government hospital in Khost." A few days later, at a Baghdad college, a female Sunni suicide bomber blew herself up amid students who were ready to sit for an exam, killing 40 people.It goes of from there, but it got my outrage boiling over, with full realizations about the problems we have and the seeming impossibility of ever clearing them up. However the movie leaves us with a glimmer of hope, a glimmer so far away you're not quite sure you're seeing anything, possibly just a hallucination, an illusion, a pipe dream from having been alone in the dark for too long. But the glimmer is there and it is real.
Stop and think for a moment how sick this is. Then stop for another moment and listen to the silence. The Bush team is mute. It says nothing, because it has no moral authority. No one would listen. Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to people who blow up emergency wards [and children.]
