May 14, 2007

Calvin's Birthday

Luna and I celebrated Calvin's birthday today. We went over to his place in the afternoon to watch Children of Men with some of his friends, and then went to have dinner at A&J Restaurant in Cupertino Village. The food was good, although Luna thinks it was just okay since it wasn't really anything special. There were about eight of us total at dinner. I think most of them are friends Calvin met through work.

Children of Men is a movie that I had heard a little about and was slightly interested in seeing, but not really wanting to see it a lot. I feel a little funny about Clive Owen as an actor. He's good, but for some reason I don't really like his personality or something as an actor.

Anyway, the movie is about a police-state near-future variation of Britain where crackdowns on terrorism and illegal immigration have become both everyday background noise and also the political movement. The rest of the world has fallen into chaos, supposedly, with refugees trying to get into mainstream British society to live a better life. Of course, there is a political movement against these draconian policies. But the core of the plot is that humans are no longer able to conceive. The opening sequence is about the murder of an 18-year-old who is a celebrity only because he is the youngest person in the world.

Supposedly the movie is changed from the book in many ways to make it a political and social criticism of the current state of affairs. And I actually found that part of the film to be the most interesting. There isn't a lot of focus on the science, or reasons, or social changes that would result from a world without children. Although there is brief attention given to the violence that would arise from an entire species without hope of the future.

Unfortunately, I don't think there was anything that revolutionary or really special about how the film went about it. It kind of feels like the world situations and ideas are put together in a collage, but without any real thought about what that means. As someone that already knows about what goes on in the world, I don't feel like I got a whole lot out of it. And if someone doesn't know what's going on in the world, there's nothing in this film that would help them make the connection.

Posted by josuah at May 14, 2007 5:01 AM UTC+00:00

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