Captain’s Logos

Lately I have watched two movies that I really liked. The first one is called "Children of Men" and is a science-fiction tale about the state of the world in 40 odd years. I liked it for two reasons, the first one was it's frightening plausibility, and the second for it's attention to detail.

If you've watched this movie, you may notice that whomever made it went to great pains to make sure that every smallest detail of every scene shot had some sort of significance. The bulletin boards they pass as they're heading off on a train, the newspaper clips that are panned over oh so briefly, the colors people wore and the attitudes they had, they were all deliberately planned out. It's one of those movies you could watch 10 times and still pick up new things along the way. I believe in the industry they call this a 'layered film'.

The scary thing about this movie though, is that although it is based in the not-so-far future, it is a completely different world than what we live in right now. I'm not talking about flying cars and robot servants, but just the quality of life and the ethos of life are, I'd like to think, more than a few years away from us.

However, everything that has gone wrong and made life so drastically miserable, can be traced to issues that we, as a global community, are dealing with right now. Immigration reform, separation of super-rich from middle class, threat and fear of terrorism, gluttonization of capitalization, all these things are issues that we are dealing with right now, which according to the movie, end up going horribly amiss.

The other movie I watched and enjoyed was "Pan's Labyrinth" which is an adult fairy tale. I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed though, because all the reviews made it out to be something it really wasn't. It was a fantasy, to be sure, but it was not a fantasy in the 'Lord of the Rings' sense, rather it was a reality/fantasy combo. Nevertheless, it was really good because of the cinematography and the special effects.

I can truthfully say I have never seen a movie more gory or less offensive. This is because it was not done in an effort to shock or disgust (although it certainly has that capability), rather it was done to portray a very very realistic rendering of the tale.

If you're reading a book, it's up to your imagination to supply the details, and if the book says, "he cut off his leg with a bandsaw" it is up to you to supply the appropriate graphic content. Usually when I get to one of these scenes in a book, my imagination conjures up more of a symbol for leg-being-chopped-off, then actually witnessing it. However, in this movie, your imagination doesn't get the opportunity to be squeamish, because it's right there in front of you.

I was also surprised at the amount of Judeo-Christian elements that were present. Many of the central ideas, themes and symbolism were rather easily traceable to Christianity. This surprised me because I'm sure that those in the evangelical circles would be quick to brand this movie as being pagan in a very polytheistic cultic sense. I would be curious to hear more about the screenwriter's and producers intent they had for this movie.