Monday, February 11, 2008

Children of Men

This is a dazzling film. I was dazzled. It's those long camera takes. The are no cuts, no breaks to our concentration giving us an excuse to go to the toilet. Watch the camera work and editing here and be amazed. The beauty of it is that it's almost imperceptible. (Hats off to the Flame operators). This film is as natural as a child's gaze.


Technical achievements aside, this film has something to say. Says the director - what if every child was viewed as the only child in the world? Imagine people viewing each baby as they might the infant Christ. Imagine if battles stopped on account of this miraculous presence of innocent life. It's a thought, sure. And yes, of dubious real world utility, but who cares? Watch the scene where this climax occurs and have your heart broken. The flood of conflicting powerful emotions it creates hits like a tidal wave.

But powerful or no, it's a single notion in a very busy movie. What of the world that it posits? What of its protagonists? What of people's motives? And their responses? This movie certainly resembles a guide to the revolution. What clues can we take from it?

The World

This is a dystopian future defined by its lack of children. Inexplicably, women the world over ceased to be fertile eighteen years earlier. Never mind that society and technology clearly continue, somehow this scientific question is beyond the powers that be. Best the audience not ask the question, otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. We just take it as read. Fair enough.

But is this a metaphor? For what? We know the Bilderbergers have said the world population should be 500 million and posited beyond mass-murder means of achieving their ends. Is this film for them? Or the dozen families above them? Or is it merely a dopey science-fiction what-if vehicle for a series of adventures and lesser messages?

Certainly it leads to action sequences and art direction. It's like a crummy Blade Runner without the Ginza vibe. Were the women in Blade Runner infertile? Certainly there were no kids. Both films posit a depopulated world falling apart. Blade Runner was a narrow-focus, existentialist, cops and robbers flick. This movie has a wider eye. It concerns itself with how a society that's falling apart will be run. Shades of V for Vendetta. And as in V, British society is a variation of fascist, albeit less snappily dressed. In amongst this are armed opposition, foreign refugees, religious nutbars and assorted bit-players. And our hero.

The Hero

Will we ever grow tired of Clive Owen? It's those eyes. Mind you, it's a pity he didn't will them to look elsewhere when Frank Miller pitched his sadistic comic-book gore-fest to him. But never mind. Owen here plays a blank everyman and never were his eyes put to better use.

The opening scene defines Owen, and the world, by way of a terrorist bombing. Shockingly, which is to say, without cinematic hint, the cafe he just walked out of, explodes. A woman staggers out carrying her own severed arm. Cut to titles. The surprise absence of chaotic sound and the sudden appearance of the stark graphics is tremendously effective. Not least at separating us from pondering the terror attack and Owen's lack of a response. Later we're told the government was responsible. But so what? It warrants a single line of dialogue and is then forgotten. Apart from a brief whinge about the ringing in his ears, Owen seems entirely unaffected by the carnage. At work immediately afterwards, he asks for time off but incredibly uses the unrelated death of a celebrity as his excuse. The bombing is not in the news and nor does anyone mention it. Is this a daily event? Or rare? We have no idea. And the woman carrying her severed arm? Nothing. It's like she never existed.

The film and its hero seem far more preoccupied with the celebrity death of Baby Diego, the youngest person in the world. Baby Diego has a catchy tabloid-ready name, ala Britney or Paris. And like them he occupies the discourse in inverse proportion to his relevance. Admittedly this lack of young people defines the movie but Owen doesn't give a shit about that either. Baby Diego was a wanker, says he. A strange sentiment for man who hours earlier witnessed a woman blown to pieces.

Apparently Owen once believed in something. We don't know what. He was some variety of merry prankster who put ketamine in an official's coffee. Whatever it was he thought before, he no longer thinks it now. He seems not to have a life. He has a job that can be defined as computers and partitions. Who cares as to what variation of meaningless it is? Not him, not us. Fair enough.

To rope him into the story, his ex-partner (and the mother of his child, now dead), returns to seek his help in an anti-government plot. The memory of his child is intended to be meaningful but isn't. I guess it serves to tie him to the film's defining lack of children but really it's small potatoes. Michael Caine, the hero's stoner friend, discusses Owen's loss in pseudo-philosophical terms, but really it's just gibberish. (Not to mention a damnable slur on the many fine conversations undertaken by stoner philosophers. I take this personally since the first scene of Owen sharing a joint with Caine is a spookily precise snapshot of Me and my buddy Ledge respectively).

But forget that. Crucially, Owen has no opinion about anything. The only opinion he ever offers is that the miraculously pregnant woman, who is the Maguffin/Madonna of this film, should be handed over to the media or the government. Brilliant. Otherwise every plan or initiative that Owen follows is someone else's. His delivery of the Madonna at the end of the flick arguably represents a triumphantly dogged lack of imagination. Says wikipedia - Children of Men is a road movie charting Owen's 'heroic journey'. Um, okay. If you say so.

The Government

Bloody Fascists! We hate them because, um... they round up illegal immigrants and, um... what does this government do apart from this? Not much. Apart from black-armoured para-military rounding up or guarding immigrants the PTB are entirely unobtrusive. But we should know that they are wicked because they mistreat foreigners. Sure enough, regular Britons seem entirely unconcerned. Like our hero, they walk past cages of illegal aliens that absurdly sit on train platforms and next to bus-stops. Who is this a comment on? The government or the citizens? What are we to make of it? That foreigners are very important and hard done by? That we should know fascists by how they mistreat foreigners? Really, it's vague to the point of useless. I have it pegged as a dopey quasi-left excuse for art-direction.

We do see the enforcers of the law responding to a feral attack (that we later find is a variation of false-flag). But this scene may as well be from The Bill. The police are well within their rights. The two police who, not unreasonably, pursue our gallant band are shot in cold blood. Sure enough the shooter is later revealed to be a duplicitious bloodthirsty terrorist.

And to the strains of Court of the Crimson King we meet Danny Huston, of whom I am a big fan. Anyone not seen The Proposition yet? It's brilliant and so is Huston. He's the son of John Huston, doncha know. And Huston is the Minister of rescuing great art from the mad hammer-wielding masses and furnishing his apartment with it. Nice. And he's nice too. Really charming. And he helps the hero get the travel documents, the precise purpose of which, our hero does not understand. It was someone else's idea. Anyway his very nice friend in the government helps him out. Bloody Fascists! Oh. At no point does he seem to need or use these documents. What was that all about?

The Opposition

It is the people who oppose the government that comprise the villains in this movie. Julianne Moore, Owen's aforementioned ex, is the leader of the 'Fishes' (don't ask me, maybe it made sense in the book - if it's a hint as to christianity, it's a lonely one) who initially kidnap Owen so that Moore may explain to him what he is to do. Moore aside, the lesser Fishes are surly and drone on in an eye-glazing doctrinaire style. Moore doesn't last long. Her killer is her 2IC who organised the false-flag killing and intends to use the Christ child for a nefarious plot of anti-government mayhem and bloodshed. The other members of the Fishes' committee are not only dupes but a worthless variety of the Judean People's Front. No Castro, Ho Chi Minh or Chavez here. The Fishes, like the film, are merely concerned with the mistreatment of refugees. Perhaps that was the only Python topic left after they'd conceded the Roman's brilliant contributions of sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health. Idiocy aside, the Fishes are the most perfectly useless and repellent opposition ever. Don't look here for inspiration for what to do under fascism. Why is it that no one ever thinks to attack the media? That's what I'd do. Oh wait, this is the media. D'oh!

Otherwise, throughout the entire second half of the movie the Fishes are those from whom we flee in terror. Those who do not flee, like Michael Caine, are shot in cold blood. The Gaza/Fallujah battle scenes, which our Joseph, Mary and Jesus miraculously walk through, are due to Fishes' provocative actions. The government's overwhelming military response featuring hundreds of troops, heavy armour and airstrikes is less a criticism of them than of the Fishes. The troops are not only clean and well-dressed, but they seem to have nice manners too. Not like those grotty feral Fishes. We cheer when Fishes are shot by the military. It's unambiguous - Fascists Good, Anti-Fascist Terrorists Bad.

The Fishes aside, there is the fabled Human Project. We never quite get to see the Human Project or find out what they are. No one really knows. No one can contact them apart from Julianne Moore. And she's dead. Apparently they live on an Island in the Azores or somesuch. Apparently they're scientists who want to cure infertility. Apparently they want to want to make a 'new world'.

Er... okay. That's not scary. Did somebody say Bilderbergers just now? How about the twelve families? (What is he on about?)

But forget the nutty ravings. In this film, we're given not a single clue as to the veracity of the Human Project. Was I to suggest that they could well be a bunch of racist, self-impressed, wealthy motherfuckers who viewed the rest of humanity as cattle, or that they wanted the Madonna's child as fodder for pedophiles, there's nothing in this movie to say otherwise. We should know that they're good by way of the reverent hushed tones of the clueless members of the People's Front of Judea. Said the director, post movie, 'They are a metaphor for the possibility of the evolution of the human spirit.' Ha ha ha ha. What the fuck does that mean? Meanwhile back in the real world of Children of Men, our hero has handed over a mother and her miraculous baby to complete strangers. We know nothing of them apart from the fact that they've chosen to turn their backs on the rest of humanity - and that we should place all our trust and hope in them. Whoever they are.

Foreigners

There's certainly no shortage of them. Curiously there's no uniformity to what we're meant to think of various people. Gypsies get a guernsey here. Who apart from Tony Gatlif ever touches gypsies? The old gypsy woman is brave and true and I groove on her. We also see white Russians. They too are hospitable and honest, and not vilified. Um, aren't we meant to hate them? Likewise, a Pole is treated neutrally. We see Muslims. They are sporting Arabic-Samurai headbands, waving kalashnikovs and shouting Allah u Akbar. Are they bad or good? Or merely visual reinforcement of those crazy TV Muslims who hate us for our freedom? Sure why not. But it is a lonely reference, and pales in the face of white wickedness. And there are black people here. Indeed our Madonna is black. Apparently the director wanted to allude to humanity having come from Africa. Sounds fair to me. But our head Fish is black, and vicious, duplicitous and murderous with it. This is a comment on black people? No, says I. It's merely Chiwetel Ejiofor's ability to flip between nice guy and villain. And no, his name doesn't mean anything if you read it backwards.

And there are Jewish references. In the descent into Gaza/Fallujah we are given obscure, blink-and-you-miss-it Arbeit Macht Frei references. Huh? Surely this open-air prison is Gaza? Such confusion - every visual is Gaza but the music is Auschwitz. Is this the director throwing a sop to the producers? Has he won, by reminding us of Gaza? Or have they won, by reminding us Jews are victims? Perhaps it's a tie. Perhaps it's just a clueless hodge-podge. Either way it leads us nowhere.

The Totality

I don't know that this is quite as cynical and wicked an enterprise as is so commonly offered up by Hollywood. I wonder at the Spanish director. If he's wicked, he's unfocused. If he's good, he's misleading. Perhaps he's just dim? Perhaps he really was dazzled by his dizzy message of the sanctity of the life of the innocent? Perhaps the anti-government forces are villainous because the director wanted a surprising switch half way through the movie? Perhaps he really does believe his own blatherings about hope and inserted the Human Project into the film for altruistic reasons? It's entirely possible he means well. Having not seen his other significant flick Y Tu Mama Tambien I'm in no position to discuss this work in reference to others. It's poor of me I know, but I have no idea what's in the director's head. But really this movie should stand on its own. And as such, how do we judge it? A noble failure with moments of greatness? A subtle but directionless piece of misdirection? Both? Neither? Sorry folks, I have no answers.

17 comments:

annemarie said...

Nobody's got no answers? Well then, that means that somebody's got them. heehee hoho

Cool review. I must watch this flick again.

later mite :)

nobody said...

not necessarily...

Anonymous said...

I flipped through this film. Wherever I stopped, the composition of what was on the screen was great.
I only viewed it because my daughter said she liked it. We sort of like the same things in movies. Although she's hooked on Lost??
I had a quick look at Lost.
They're all dead - in limbo.
Once they reconcile their past life they're gone.
There you go I'm a film critic.
Tony

kikz said...

hey.....
sorry that took so long..

you're quite amazing...
and people like you.... able to synthesize and distill things in such a manner. i'm envious.
obviously you were good at your corp craft. what little i know of you, it's understandable that you became disenchanted (smirk) with the ad game.
i'd imagine the constant toning down to a consumerist common denominator is quite the drag.
under-utilization of a gift generally leads to atrophy.

you and les both amaze me, and in a less rabbithole'd thru the looking glass lightly world, i guess you'd feed yourself quite well w/your gifts. shrugz... maybe most creative peepz are meant to hover at poverty's edge. a prereq, a paying of dues......... less bling to blind ya...


so, "here" we pass the time, mentally shadowboxing w/sheep dreams.
i watch the moving shadows on the side of "animal farm barn" for reasons quite different than most.


ChildrenofMen....

since i jump'd the gun and offerd some comment on CoM earlier.... i'll skip the "surveillance world norm" cue, and lack of scientific inquiry WTF's. to borrow a line, lozta stuff that we know we don't know. i still hate rumsfeld.....

so, is all of humanity affected? or just the sheep who've (up til now) somehow mysteriously lost their fertility? could be, all'z well (up til now) according to the elite's NWO population agenda...
"they who must not be named at any cost" may have retained their fertility and progeny, how do we know?

could just be... muutha naaaayt-cha - Gaia has simply had Enuff. we don't know.

the Human Project. the fishes could be directed/infiltrated by the elite for intel-recon, on the (baby)situation.... or the HP couldbe/wouldbe the saviors of humanity?
we dunno. we don' get any revelation of the method in this one, that i can see....
we just witness the effects.

our clive.
the blank man. maybe it's yet another cue we are to take as the norm? grief in "normal" people passes stages, but i don't think too many of us actually finish the process unscathed, if we finish it at all. from a perspective of "mama" i can say that losing a child would no-doubt leave me clinically insane. the fight would be to retain enough of me, enough will --- to be present for the other two. if none other were there to carry on for, blank or blunted emotionally as our hero is... doesn't seem that far out of realm of probability.
in light of humanity's lost fertility, he has no other hope of trying again... not w/his crazy ex, which i'd guess their child's death severed the relationship for all time, as she went radical.. he went numb........ he's given up on the future.. he just exists... for one reason or another, he chooses not to end it all............. he still feeds the corp machine, causing no trouble for them, allowed to live. just what they want. compliant, zombies who can handle the master's machines, w/o needing help to change their pants, or be handfed.. (hat-tip to bageant, for the "pants" ditty)
kid dead, marriage dead, x dead, world dead, emotions dead, walking dead.

but there again, i've noted in the realworld, raging emotions are not only socially unacceptable rebellion, deemed worthy of mandated corporate sensitivity training or simple rehab... but of forced medicated stupor for life, w/or w/o institutionalization, depending on the whims of authority (for everybody's good, including yours). raging emotions/passions are hallmark of the anarchist, the radical, the foaming at the mouth fanatic, our defiant youth tagged by teachers as....Oppositional Defiant Disorder(s) the ADHD(s)... dope johnny, or he's outta school......part/parcel of the advancing horde of lunatic fringe on the remnant of sane society..or so many somethings/someones..... would have us believe.
in another sheepdream, which i've not seen, nicole kidman must mask her emotions in dealing w/some alien invasion to avoid detection & death.....

pokerface.... not bad advice, if you have to move among them or their goons. fake it till ya make it, no one's to know... according to the rogue traders.... it's... the way.... to.. go.


our philosopher king.
we're cued to ignore his rantings...as the example we are offered, (and you noted)..
he who sees reality thru majiK smoke, is rendered impotent, even before his death. shining only false reflected light, babbling gibberish. ( i can't remb the conversation, too busy w/the background and the setting, chalk that up to having a huge creepout (shudderz) factor toward caine).... and even though he aids the cause.... is dealt w/like we knew he would be, like he knew he would be..cuz in this world everything beautiful is dead.... art, love...philosophy..... he knew they were coming, and he was ready... he eased his wife on thru to the other side, before the shit went down. he did give em the finger before they off'd him.
as our clive hears then sees there's nothing he can do to save the king/queen he boots hell outta dodge thru the good 'ol treeline.... i wondered did the villains shoot the dog too? if not... how long it would stay w/it's dead master & mistress? would a cleaner crew render the question moot? in retrospect.. i don't think they'd bother w/a clean up.
there's no one to care except the dogma, and he won't tell.

real children of men.
spookin' the herd, w/o terrorizing them into forgetting... is not looked kindly on by the masters.
one way or another you will be dealt w/get the fuk used to it. resistance is... after all, futile..we are reminded.
and now, thru the magiK of technology; the functional (fMRI) and homegrown terrorism legislation,
the thought police of Spielberg's Minority Report are now a nightmarish reality.
our thoughts are not even our own, as the fMRI don' lie. the elite have openly declared us the enemy. i have returned the vanilla flavor, to me and mine.....and show them every fallen or slipped mask of the enemy's many faces as i can discern.

whether they think their mama crazy... well, it's only the degree that remains to be seen...
i hope for their sake, i am totally batshitbanshee.....and its all a bad dream.. but i know it's not.

i've had a friend i trust (who saw action in nam w/a tank crew)......question my bet, as devil's advocate.... wouldn't it just easier for them(my kids) to let them go, not knowing & young as they are, they'll never know the difference? well, they already do know the difference.

my answer was/is still... no. FUK NO.
guess it's my wildass braveheart stock, or romantic homage to it, and or sheer dumb luck...
but i'm still here to fight it and curse it, and write badly worded run on sentences about it (grin)
.....as so many before me have done.
traceable to that cathar/druid/pelegian-heretic/prestby/freemason FUK YOU to the romans and their bloody church since early 400's, and Hypatia's last breath. FUK YOU; to the black death, the potato famine, the storms of the atlantic, the wilds of young america, the civil war, can't starve me to death.....FUK YOU; to the 1918 flu and the trenches of europe, the hurricanes and tornado's of the gulfcoast, the asbestos laden warships my daddy built and died a slow death from, and the simian40 aids virus laden small pox shot, i refuzed as a kid. FUK YOU; aspartame and msg laden junkfood....and FUK YOU very much, to our TX gov'nr good hair & his mandated guardasil...you can't force me - to let you - use my kids as guinea pigs.

i'll fight it all, curse at it, laff at it, til last breath. keepin well in the treeline, and live to fight another day.
i want my kids to fight, not end it on bended knee as sheepslaves. obstinate, defiant one that i am, its in my genes.

maybe that's what drives our clide? even if he has no cognizance of it.
having lost connection to his tribe and his family to his grief...
his wider lineage within humanity, calls to him from his very cells... to hope against all odds and uncertainties to last breath.... to try to save it or at least give it a chance..
thru the child of the second black eve.

or.. i guess there wouldn't be a movie, that we'd of bothered to comment on. >:)

maybe the elite do laugh at our squirming futility, thinking of us dazed, watching the pictures on the side of the barn.

their inbred DNA will do them in ultimately, it's a given... monarchical tyranny always ends in imbecility....no matter what the master-splicers of genetics or sheepdreams do.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! So the movie appears to have one powerfully emotional idea ("what if there was only ONE baby left in the whole world . . ."), and ONE notably emotional scene (baby stops war momentarily), and NO other real point or focus to it. Just vague generalities like fascism is bad, but it's no-one's fault really, and terrorists are a scummy bunch who are obviously worse than fascists.

But I did just figure out why I was needing kleenex. It was the MUSIC, especially the quoted music, which was used to very powerful effect, including Court of the Crimson King, and one of my all time favorite classical pieces, the Shostakovich 10th symphony, which is what the White Russians were listening to on their CD player inside their little enclave.

ellis t

nobody said...

Yeah Ellis, it is the music. As a visuals guy it took me a long time to wake up to how important music is. Sadly I'm unmusical but I have muso friends and those rotten swine find a joy I can only get second hand. Still better'n nothing.

Otherwise, in film (and opera actually, big Puccini fan, me) whenever I lose the plot emotionally it's due to the music. I once heard Carmina Burana at the Sydney Opera House with a 200 voice choir and was so blown away that my vision went fuzzy, I had hot sweats and nearly fainted. It was one of the most intense moments of my life. In fact, I could name a ton of moments of music (must be real, reproductions don't cut it) like nothing else in my life. What does it mean? Beats me. With music, words escape me.

But otherwise mate, that was just my humble opinion. Best I could come up with. As ever I stand to be corrected.

Like with Kikz! Onya mate. A ton of observations and variations. I missed the whole 'blank as mourning' thing. Makes sense. I was viewing through a revolution lens and in that regard he merely seems useless.

BTW Caine killed the dog. The Fishes said so. I missed it too. And mate, don't you go changing. You're my kind of angry, ha!

Otherwise, broadly, it occurred to me that the director is Spanish. I don't know any Spaniards as such, only South Americans and I found that they were pretty much either right-wing or left-wing. Unlike anglo sheep who have no idea what the difference is or why one would choose. I recently chased a Brazilian chick who seemed the ticket until I mentioned Chavez and she wigged out and spouted a ton of right wing drivel. I was gone the next day, ha ha.

Anyway, I suspect that our director is a soft fascist of the Hispanic variety. Nothing to do with the master race, just a vague self-interest and distaste for the masses.

And thanks Tony - Is THAT what Lost is about? I saw a single ep at the urging of my twenty-something brother. I couldn't figure it out and couldn't be fagged trying. Now I needn't. Mind you, I could watch Michelle Rodriguez jut that chin out all day long.

kikz said...

firstly. beg pardon, to all.
my earlier long winded ramble is... inexcusable, really.

it's been quite a while since i've seen the flick, and strangely.. remb nothing of the musical score.
sound/vibration.... is very evocative, mentally and physically... i know you have no interest in arcana, but here's an oddity of sound, cymatics... it leads other places.... but, i ran across it researching rossyln chapel, in scotland.
cymatics
http://fusionanomaly.net/
cymatics.html

rosslyn chapel.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/
blogs/archives/5529

anyway....

how could i've missed king phil "releasing" the dog(ma)?

geez, i need to see this again sometime, paying special attention to the music.

i'm sure the director's politics/ethnicity "shade" the movie. how could they not?
... SA politics... ya got me? have no frame of reference other than MSM commentary on Chavez... and the 3-4yr old opine of a visiting brazilian cotton geneticist's (then) hopeful affection for Lula ...shrugz....

ack! a LOST fan, of sorts...
i sincerely hope it's not purgatory...... tunisian polar bears aside >:)........i'll not be happy if this turns out to be the case.. >:)

again.. so sorry to've blathered for so long earlier..

annemarie said...

wow. fantastic comments from ever'one. ta :)

and that bit about music? I'm thoroughly convinced that music is THE key. And that is why there's so much fucking noise all around us, noise in "music", noise in society, chatter, blather, noise in media, noise in print...all designed to prevent us from hearing the music.

Music soothes the savage beast, they say. Yeah it does. But the music also and at the same time, stirs the savage beast, the animal in us.

Music is the key. Ohm.......... :)

nobody said...

Hee Hee,

Relax kikz, just kikz back, ha ha. You're fine. You remind me of James Ellroy, insofar as reading him is like biting a chainsaw. It's too much at first but after you get used to it, it's fun. Er... kinda thing. On Ellroy - I grooved on his LA Quartet and the American Tabloid trilogy but he lost me with his last thing. It was like self-parody with an absurd anti-muslim diatribe thing thrown in. So fuck him.

Hmm... music. You're on to something there annemarie. Perhaps I'll jot down some thoughts in a similar-ish vein. Keeping in mind I'm a complete know-nothing and can only discuss it as one on the recieving end.

Anonymous said...

kikz said, "have no frame of reference other than MSM commentary on Chavez"

Some Irish documentarians went to Venezuela to make a talking head documentary about Chavez and his programs, and while they were there filming Chavez and other people in his government, the US sponsored a coup which removed Chavez in an airplane to a Caribbean island. So the Irish filmmakers just stayed right there in the main government building, and filmed the coup as it was happening! And when the coup plotters took over the government, the film crew kept right on running their cameras! The coup only lasted a few days but the film crew recorded the main plotters during their moments of triumph, and THEN they filmed the palace guard (loyal to Chavez) as they retook the palace and arrested the plotters and brought Chavez back in a helicopter . . . and then they edited all that into a film called "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The film also includes TV news footage showing that the coup plotters' story of the pre-coup violence (i.e., that it was "done by pro-Chavez people") was false, and that it was a story cooked up specifically to justify the coup, and that the story was publicized for that purpose by the corporate media news stations, and the documentary has the media people on film, bragging on-camera about having succeeded in their deception! Also there's very interesting background info about Venezuela, why Chavez is popular, etc. Altogether a great documentary and frame-of-reference for understanding Chavez. This link I hope is to the theater-release version, which I saw. From Google it looks like there's a shorter television version also.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13119.htm

ellis

Anonymous said...

also, kikz if I may say so I loved your long winded ramble.

"maybe that's what drives our clive? even if he has no cognizance of it.
having lost connection to his tribe and his family to his grief...
his wider lineage within humanity, calls to him from his very cells..."

I remember deciding as a pre-teen to not have children so as to NOT perpetuate the (then) seemingly insoluble problem of people perpetuating their insoluble problems by having children and passing on to the children their seemingly insoluble problems . . .

At a certain point it made so much sense to me that I was actually attracted to men since that meant the possibility of a fulfilling life without biological fatherhood.

At 57 perhaps you can imagine I have had the opportunity to rethink all of that! (As nobody would say, "ha ha!") Though in some ways I do still agree with my pre-teen self, it was a mistake, i.e. ego in action, to deny my "connection to my tribe and family to my grief...." And that is really why I was crying about the "Children of Men" movie, though what I said about the music is still true, music is among all other things that it is, a doorway for contacting the truth about whatever does need grieving about, making it possible to recognize underneath the grief, ego making its accustomed psychotic mess.

ellis

nobody said...

Ha Ha!

New film tomorrow. Kung Fu Hustle.

nobody said...

And yeah, kids. I almost prefer kids to adults. Oops, does that sound weird? It's just that with adults I have to adopt a persona. Kids are more open and, believe it or not, I can discuss the philosophy of selflessness with them and they don't take it personally, ha ha.

kikz said...

thanks ellis..and nice ta meetcha.

i was embarrassed at the length of it... blabbering all over noby'z comments page :)

i hav a female friend, who went so far as to have her tubes tied at an early age. i never really figured out the why.. maybe early trauma? i dunno. some are meant to, some are not. having been a parent for 13yrs now, and 3 kids later... it's a double edged sword.. the egoism of wanting to "continue your line" fulfilling your biological destiny and function... wanting to be rememb'd.. and or loved. wishing on some level for immortality thru your kids and sucessive generations. ...... or feeling you owe it to your tribe/clan to continue.........

and other daZe, having them run you so totally insane (something inbuilt w/mama's ears causes a literal short/disconnect w/other input/stimuli) having your brain fried by the neverending questions and inanely repetitive crap kids spout, watch, play.... it's a crapshoot to get them to the age of any rational thought, where you can get thru the jumble of their young minds to find coherent thought and reasoning.. which btw, gets no positive reinforcement frm the establishment.... school... not meant to.. they're breeding idiots... by design. you fight all this..... and
anyway... it does happen in odd, quiet moments.. and you see the light go on over their heads, and in their eyes.. you see that they do get it... that there is hope... and w/some guidance they just might grow up to sane... maybe.... and then they do some silly dumb thing.. that makes you wonder if they can be trusted to wipe their own bums??!!!! :)
such it parenthood.....

ellis, i take it you've reconsidered? that you'd posses the awareness to question your positive additions to humanity.. is proof to me, that there exists cognizant good in ya.

57 is late, but there are advantages to having older parents... younger ones as well. even adoption.. or mentoring... even mentoring a child w/in your extended family.. you can have a positive impact, leave some positive work of yourself to the future :) a great uncle of mine who was dust 20+yrs before i was ever born has had a direct and positive impact on me, and mine......

as young parents you have the energy it requires, but possibly not - the financial wellbeing... nor the emotional depth...

older has possibly both, financial and emotional depth, but not the energy and extended lifespan :)
sigh:) tradeoffs :)


sidebar on my rant...
the smallpox shot i referred to.. w/simian40HIV.. was in fact.. a polio vaccine.. which by the time i came up, polio had been eradicated.. lucky on that one.. i still refused the smallpox shot, don't know how i wasn't forced to have it in second grade (at school) or ever?
just wanted the correction made.

and yes, the magic of music exhibits the polarity/duality.... of shadow and light, neg/positive... and may be used for either.

geez, i could do another rant about a 7th grade dance i chaperoned last fri nite... it was gd pitiful, what has been culturally "sold" to our youth. total crap, and they eat it up.. having been offered nothing else.

snippets included.. refrains of :
i want! i want! i want! i want!
followd by unintelligible garble... some disneyesque girl/shopping chant.

another...
burn the world to the ground, how low can it go?
house/fast heartbeat bass & guitar feedback.

worst by far,
niggaz/cholo'z 'n ho'z
ghetto/barrio hiphoprapcrapgangbanga
which sent most of the boys into some masai tribal jump/moshpit/slamdance (i kid you not) bunnyhop frenzy.. scary shit...
coupla hundred teens and only one cop?!...........

it can definitely soothe or anger the savage beastie.. as i believe, our annemarie has rightfully noted :)

eeekz.. this one's gettin longin the tooth also..
gonna shut up now :)

annemarie said...

What you say is true mite. Me too. I prefer the company of infants or toddlers to that of most, and I mean most adults.

haha

later kids :)

annemarie said...

kikz,
please don't ever shut up. you have a gift, of having so much good to say/share.
as do the others here.

ta :)

nobody said...

what she said, ha ha.