Defeating Hype

I have been meaning to write here more frequently and I have devised a means that I hope will ensure weekly posts. Starting today I will be posting about movies that have been touched by one of the greatest curses I know of: hype.

For most people hype is part of the marketing package for every film, book or song that is released. Marketing has reached the sad state of claiming everything is bigger, faster and better than everything that came before. For some reason we are still swallowing these lies and forgetting that something cannot be both new and improved.

All that being said I would like to take a little time and talk about films that have suffered from this affliction, films that have been given inordinate sums of praise and have lived to tell the tale.


Film #1

Children of Men

Like every film on this list, when Children of Men was released I was already tired of hearing about it. In additional to the regular fanfare made about movies, the ad banners, splash pages and pop ups I also came across numerous articles and reviews that lauded the film.

The director, Alfonso Cuaron, had already won over many with his previous efforts like Y Tu Mama Tambien, despite having also made films like The Little Princess and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I think that any director who has worked on the Harry Potter series is bound to receive a fair amount of attention when their new films are released (although the present director, David Yates seems somehow to avoid the spotlight) but the amount of press and acclaim Children of Men received seemed disproportionate despite this.

Perhaps it was because Clive Owen, the film's lead, had recently emerged as one of Hollywood's new leading men; or because the subject matter for the film had that bleak, post-apocalyptic feel that signifies an important work. Whatever the reason --everyone was talking about Children of Men.

Needless to say my own hang-ups and short-comings caused me to quickly become disinterested with the film. Imagine my surprise and joy when I finally plucked up the courage and rented the movie. The opening sequence of the film is powerful, engaging and completely engrossing. Everything that I had been expecting of the film was immediately forgotten and the long takes soon had me absorbed in the way that you always hope a movie will.

By the time I grasped what the story was about, what the actual conflict of the movie was, I knew I was watching something that I would never forget. The number of sequences in this film that are unexpected, heartbreaking and visually arresting are too numerous to mention. The story being told is so wonderfully simple, the plot so fantastically clear and straightforward, that the viewer is allowed to sit back and enjoy the show.

Children of Men achieves what all movies should aspire to achieve: it is a compelling piece of art that is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.