Not Allusive, but Evasive

Matt Zoller Seitz has, just as we've come to expect, a brilliant take on Children of Men with which I largely concur. Key passages:

The problem with Children of Men is that it's too much of a performance and not enough of a movie. It's filled with emphatic yet fleeting references to a century's worth of miseries and atrocities, from the U.S. war in Vietnam and concurrent domestic unrest to Bosnia-Herzegovina, 9/11, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. And Owen's character, Theo -- an ex-radical turned civil servant who's asked by his ex-lover, the guerilla leader Julian (Moore), to secure letters of transit for the pregnant Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) -- could be seen as emblematic of contemporary western political malaise, if you squnt really, really hard. Unfortunately, although these touches and Cuaron's meticulous direction indicate otherwise, the film lacks a coherent vision. It's a compelling pastiche, and that's not nothing, but I wanted it to be great rather than just proficient and gripping; it never quite gets there, and it suffers in comparison to earlier classics in the same vein. Unlike, say, Brazil, which wove every scene, performance, line and design detail into an analysis of the mechanics of fascism and its bludgeoning effect on hope and imagination, or Blade Runner, whose jam-packed yet anonymous futureworld visualized life in an era where only machines with limited lifespans appreciated what it meant to be human, Children of Men's references feel at once calculated and perfunctory...

[Snip]

Its vision of a brutal, paranoid, jackboot-policed, immigrant-abusing-and-deporting England is built on very specific contemporary and recent historical references, and the film certifies its "serious" credentials by embracing a grungy naturalistic vibe. Because of these choices, the film's vagueness begins to seem not allusive, but evasive. It's very, very tastefully pushing your buttons, writing sociological and political checks it has no intention of cashing.

Addendum: Am I the only one who is consistently amazed by Seitz's ability to precisely analyze the formal properties of a film? For a long time, I was almost solely interested in film as a formal medium; I didn't care one way or the other about its cultural/political/social properties. Obviously, that's changed quite a bit. And though I'm not even remotely interested in giving up on culturally inclined criticism, reading the close, formal interpretations of folks like Seitz and Andy Horbal (look what neat tricks he does with Scream and Inside Man) sometimes makes me just a tad wistful for the days when I spent a little more time thinking about shots and cuts, film stocks and lighting...