A response to PJ's post about Children of Men

It had to happen sometime . . . (there's a scary thought)
PJ's excitement over generating this BLOG has encouraged me to post comments about her last entry-despite my reservations about participating in this medium. After all, this digital mechanism enables us to surveil one another most efficiently, but I bet you all aren't thinking about it like that so I won't belabor the point. I am posting to express my difference in opinion regarding the movie Children of Men, which PJ has characterized as "darkest of dark," "a tragic, dystopic, thinker of a movie," and "depressing with a capital D." If you know anything about PJ, you can probably glean from her tone that all of these features make the movie not worth watching, and although she is currently rebutting (from the kitchen) what she expects I will say, we all know this isn't her type of film. Let me be clear, I am not resisting PJ's reading that the film is dark, depressing or a thinker. What I am arguing is that this darkness is precisely the point and for these reasons we should be paying close attention. The basic premise of the film is that in the near future, the world finds itself unable to reproduce children for unknown reasons and this infertility leads to the proliferation of xenophobia, border protection, fetishism (over youth), and terror (familiar themes wouldn't you say?). Miraculously, a woman becomes pregnant and the plot follows her path to delivering this baby with the help of those committed to her safety (and all that that represents). While I don't want to rehearse the entirety of the film, I should say that what impressed me the most was its insightful (implicit) commentary on what happens when the family is no longer the site of governmental control. That is, this film illustrates how if we do not have children, and all that they metonymically represent, our government seems to lose its grip on culture and we spin violently into a totalizing regime so that some frail semblance of order can be maintained. Makes you think, which is good! (if you can't tell, I have been reading a lot of Foucault)

A final note on this film:
Slavoj Zizek's (philosopher) comments in the extras are spot on, especially his analysis of the film's background, which was, as he says, exquisite. I would recommend this film, it is well directed, well acted, well . . . most everything. It is depressing though. As one of my classmates said "it is shocking how many people have to die in order for this child to live"

Some other notes on the films we have watched lately:
I liked the Holiday, it is an endearing movie. Very fun.

I liked parts of Rocky Balboa, it has more depth than some of the previous films, but the digitizing of the fight scenes made the film awkward.

I loved Stranger than Fiction mainly because of the cast. Will Ferrell is not acting like Frank the Tank or Ricky Bobby, Emma Thompson is great, Dustin Hoffman is great, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is great.