I finally had a chance to see the much-acclaimed film Children of Men. I may have to watch it again as I was constantly distracted, not only by the bogglingly detailed mise-en-scène and eye-popping cinematography, but also the numerous flashbacks to Half-Life 2 that I had throughout the film.
The near-future dystopian world of Children of Men shows obvious superficial similarities with City 17: there’s abandoned buildings, empty playgrounds and torn propaganda posters. The population is unable to procreate. There’s police-state cops and military. And hey, maybe protagonist Theo Faron looks sort of like Barney if you really squint your eyes.
But it’s not just those things that reminded me of playing Half-Life 2. It’s the way Children of Men is structured and put into frame.
What really struck me is how rarely the camera leaves the world as it’s perceived by Theo Faron, even when big stuff happens. In the first minutes of the film Faron is nearly killed when terrorists blow up a building, but he doesn’t seem to care a great deal and neither does the camera. There are generally very few establishing shots; despite an intricate near-future sci-fi universe existing around the character, it only appears in the periphery of the film’s tunnel vision.
Several scenes feel like they are on rails, or even literally are. In what might be called a classic example of Mouselook Cinematography™, the camera looks outside the left and right sides of a bus or train as little mini-stories unfold — teenagers throwing rocks, surreal billboards passing by, cops beating immigrants. Visually this recalls the train ride through Black Mesa at the beginning of Half-Life and any of the other on-rails sequences in the games.
Then there’s Children of Men’s batshit insane tracking shots. I won’t spoil the specific circumstances, but there are two of them — continuous takes without cuts in which very complicated action sequences unfold one after another, each lasting between 5 and 10 minutes.
This is not a movie blog so I won’t dissect their sheer awesomeness (nor their flaws). Suffice to say the second long-take scene, which takes place in a flat under siege by the military, is exactly like a linear FPS. The camera becomes almost an extra character as it moves continuously from action to action. It’s orchestrated so well that it quickly turns ridiculous, like the events could only have happened in one implausibly specific way. I kept thinking to myself, “wow, there’s a lot of scripted scenes in here, all triggered at just the right moment. I wonder if there’s any AI…”
The overall plot structure also happens to be vaguely like a quest. Yesterday I listened to an interview with Ken Levine on the Played Podcast in which he offered a nice metaphor for linear games like Half-Life: they’re a ball of string to be untied. Children of Men feels similar. The protagonist, who is actually on an NPC escort mission for most of the movie, swirls around the labyrinthe “levels” against impossible odds, sometimes meeting allied characters who will help him to the next area or the next vehicle, on his way to wherever.
What’s funny is that all of these things are only apparent, of course, if you’ve played a game like Half-Life. If you haven’t, you’ll probably compare the story of Children of Men to 12 Monkeys and 28 Days Later and your main visual reference point would be the embed reporting during the second Iraq war.
Anyway, go see the movie, it’s quite nice.
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I will definitely check it out. This also highlights the power of the cinematics of Half Life, I remember suspending disbelief very quickly during the opening sequence.
Jordan Dennis
February 23rd, 2007
Completely off-topic, ’cause I haven’t seen Children of Men yet, but I was reading your CCP interview. It was quite lovely to read because he sounds like a very nice fellow and because I remember when CCP was started 10 years ago about all the buzz in Icelandic news papers about this huge MMO they were making.
I remember thinking “Sounds awesome. But it’s never going to be huge..” Guess I was wrong.
BigJKO
February 23rd, 2007
Heh, that *is* very off-topic.
I enjoyed taking that interview. It was pretty informal and we just kept talking when the tape ran out. If there’s one thing I still really enjoy in game journalism, it’s doing proper face-to-face interviews.
CCP is showing some new Eve Online features at GDC, so maybe I’ll do another article on it for ShackNews. (But I might be too busy.)
Marek
February 23rd, 2007
I’ll agree with you on these points, and I think they’re pretty apparent to anyone who’s played games like HL2, Call of Duty, and so forth. I know that multiple people around my work have said the film is “like a video game” after seeing it, though in my experience they meant it rather derogatorily; one of my co-workers was unimpressed by the movie “just being about getting the guy from one point to another” without feeling emotionally invested in any of it. I enjoyed the film and can’t really agree with him, but whether the parallels work for or against the success of the movie in the end, the parallels themselves are hard to deny.
I’ll argue that the terorrist bombing during the opening was protrayed with less detachment than you imply, though. When the bomb goes off, the protagonist drops his coffee & liquor bottle and stumbles to the ground in shock; the cameraman sprints past him to the site of the bombing, catching the dismembered woman in the center of the frame before a sudden cut to the title screen. I found it very emotionally affecting, and it’s something that couldn’t have happened in HL2– there is no “cameraman” nor is the point of view ever wrested from the player. Would the scene have been less effective if the camera had stayed perched on Theo’s shoulder? I’d argue so.
Also as a silly little nitpicky point, one detail I liked about the “5-10 minute tracking shot” near the end of the film was that, early in the shot, specks of blood stick to the camera lens; about halfway into the tracking shot, as the camera passes through a dark alcove when Theo enters the apartment complex, the blood disappears. Stealth cut
Steve
February 27th, 2007
You may be right about the terrorist bombing scene. It may have been partly my perception at the time. You know how that can play tricks on your memory.
I noticed the blood specks and their subsequent disappearance. A common bit of trivia for this film is that initially the director wanted to re-shoot the scene (the blood spatter was an accident), but the DP convinced him to keep it in. I’m still not sure whether to love it or not. When I saw it I thought it was awesome but it did make me overly aware of the camera. However, as Jake pointed out to me when we discussed the film, this blood spatter is about as good as a blood spatter can be. If it had been intentional, they’d probably have made a very elaborate and good looking splash on the lens, not three vague drops of red.
Marek
February 27th, 2007
I totally agree. I was watching Children of Men last week with a friend and I said to him: “this looks like Half-Life 2!”. Funny you find that also.
By the way, have you noticed that long and incredible shot inside the car when Julianne Moore gets shot? Me like.
Dr. Ob
February 28th, 2007
I know this is a really old thread, but i just played half-life 2: episode 2 and its on my mind again. The first thing i said when i came out of children of men was “alfonso cuaron had to have played half life 2. The similarities were so scary. It cant be coincidence. It’s been on my mind lately, and now i really want to watch children of men again.
Devin
January 10th, 2008
And just to correct Steve, no the blood doesn’t disappear when he enters the passageway (because there wasn’t a cut) - the blood starts to fade inside - because it was digitally painted out when Cuarón decided it became to distracting.
PJ
July 21st, 2008