Media Language and Children of Men

There are a couple of really notable things about the Media Language used in Children of Men:

1. The mise-en-scene. Particularly the extensive use of a very desaturated colour pallette which is used to connote the loss of hope in a world where there are no children and therefore no hope. It is a bleak looking film. The other interesting thing about the mise-en-scene is the set design - although the film takes us into the year 2027 the set design is recognisable to contemporary audiences. There are not lots of high tech gadgets or anything that has been designed in such a way that we don't really recognise it. It's interesting to compare the set design and props and so on with I, Robot, which was set in 2035 if memory serves me correctly. I, Robot is obviously much more a film set in the future and is much more evidently of the Sci-fi genre, although it is a Sci-fi and Action Generic Hybrid.

2. The long takes used. There are some notable examples of this. The first example is the scene at the beginning of the film when the coffee shop is blown up. A tracking shot follows Theo out of the shop onto The Strand in Central London and then arcs around him to show the shop being blown up. The sequence when the car is ambushed in the woods goes on for several minutes without a cut. This is a highly ambitious sequence using a sophisticated rig on top of a car. Finally, there is the astonishing sequence in Bexhill when Theo and Kee leave the apartments and the soldiers stop firing momentarily. Again, this is a really long tracking shot.