Friday, January 12, 2007

My World, My Dystopia


Bob Dylan has a famous line: "I'll let you be in my dream, if I can be in yours." I think I'd like to amend it to read: "I won't make you live in my dystopia, if you won't make me live in yours."

I saw another movie about a "dystopia" which, since "utopias" are idealized places that "don't exist," the only "topias" available to us are the "dys" type. They are the places where flaws flourish, worlds very much like our own. First it was "Idiocracy," (see previous post) and now it's "Children of Men," a truly powerful, mind-blowing experience. It's not just a great movie, (you will never think of "homeland security," and "immigration reform" in quite the same way), it brings a few key trends and just slightly pushes them forward to reveal the deep cracks in our world that are already with us, tearing our societies open wide as we sit here today.

I guess, all I really want to say about the movie is: go see it! It's filmmaking at it's finest. Great direction, great acting. A perfectly realized vision. I loved the music, especially the late sixties British psychedelic music that comes to us from another world, far, far, away, promising a golden, trippy, time of love - a glimpse into a utopia that couldn't quite stand up to the light of day. The Court of the Crimson King, indeed.