2006: Two Films Of Note

Out of the Blue is a troubling, understated account of a New Zealand massacre, where loner David Gray shot dead 13 people in an isolated hamlet, Aramoana.
Many reviews of this film emphasised the lack of attention to Gray’s motives, the way in which the film avoided the question of how his actions had come about. (“It’s much, much harder to understand or explain what Gray did. Sarkies and Tetley don’t really try…”, “Pic makes no effort to explain or analyze his actions…”, etc.) I think these reviews are wrong. Gray’s psychology and situation are given plenty of attention, albeit in a subtle and understated way. There is a line clearly drawn of a man in a spiral of decline, losing his connections with those around him, increasingly unable to cope and this inability feeding back into itself. The reviewers seem to be looking for a Freudian narrative, a primal scene where his father strangled his puppies or his mother locked him in a cupboard or he was discovered masturbating or whatever. They, and we, have no right to such a narrative. The world is not made of such things. Freud was wrong. The real story of the Aramoana massacre is the fragility of the social human.
Children of Men is a vivid political fever-dream, a nervy reaction against global tendencies towards paranoia and fascism as channelled through Tony Blair’s government. The film’s future history is ridiculously implausible (no children are born for twenty years, chopping out a significant portion of the labour pool – but immigrants are despised and feared, when they would be the only way of shoring up these shortages?) but that just didn’t matter. The film is a personal journey through a set of social nightmares, delivered with absolute conviction and a technical audacity that is simply breathtaking. The film wears its Grauniad-liberal convictions proudly (possibly those who have never lived in Europe won’t understand just how incredible it is to prominently feature selfless heroics by an unkempt gypsy) and casts unpleasant shadows on what is already in place around us.
And lest this review give the impression that the film is leaden and worthy, I should emphasise it is first and foremost a great thriller/action film, with more edge-of-your-seat sequences than anything I’ve seen out of Hollywood in years. Weaknesses: a conclusion that seemed a little undercooked; that’s about it.

7 thoughts on “2006: Two Films Of Note”

  2. I like that Gray’s motives were left vague. Any speculation would rapidly have descended unavoidably into cliche.
    Motive in this case is almost irrelevant to the events anyway.

  3. I still haven’t seen Out of The Blue, but Children Of Men was one of the best new movies I saw this year along with V For Vendetta.

  4. Ahem *coughs politely* one doesn’t have to live in Europe to appreciate the Gypsy 😉
    I quite liked the conclusion. I thought it apt in the overall context.

  5. One thing I really liked about Out of the Blue is the way that it stuck as much as possible to what was known, what was established by survivors. Particular point is the way that you only saw the killings that were witnessed by survivors: the other deaths were implied (bodies were shown) and you heard the shots, but didn’t see the actual killings. As it was, the “this is why he did it” sort of thing seemed to have been extrapolated from eyewitness reports of Gray’s demeanor and actions in the weeks prior to his implosion. Frankly, I though the lack of a tacked-on motivation strengthened the movie.

  6. Hang on, a conclusion that seemed under-cooked? I don’t get what you mean.
    **SPOILERS FOR THE END OF CHILDREN OF MEN**
    The movie ends with the mother of the first child born on Earth in over 18 years waiting in a rowboat (along with the corpse of the hero) for what she hopes is rescue by a mysterious society known as the Human Project, which the movie has given us reason to believe is not as altruistic as the characters seem to think. When a boat finally arrives to pick her up, it is named Tomorrow.
    Seemed pretty potent to me.

  7. Pearce: “a bit undercooked” was a reference not to what happens – the events themselves were nice – just that I felt it left something unsaid that it should have said, and as a result finished too quickly. I’ve seen it mentioned in more than a few net reviews and conversations, too, so it’s not just me.
    Not that I have any idea what I would have put in there, of course.
    ‘A bit undercooked’ is meant as the lightest form of criticism possible, too.

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