Dual Dystopia

In an effort to get caught up with the massive backlog of DVDs and DVD-Rs stacking up in a silently mocking fashion in the office and on the shelves downstairs, I am attempting to start watching one movie a night for as long as is feasible and writing about the ones I feel are worth passing along. Perhaps this way I'll keep myself writing and hopefully lose this nagging feeling that I am unwittingly turning this condo into a museum full of pretty silver discs. I'll also try to keep the spoilers to a minimum. Promise.

Starting off our home film festival are two visions of the future of our world: neither of them particularly hopeful for the improvement of our species (like, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey) or even very technologically advanced (like, say, Minority Report or Blade Runner). While both of these movies foresee a pretty rough time ahead for the human race, one at least was leavened a bit by some viciously-deployed lowbrow humor. The other was just plain bleak, though very powerful.

Idiocracy is one of those films that was doomed to obscurity by a corporation who had no idea what to do with it. Apparently completed in 2004, Mike Judge's follow-up to the classic Office Space was shelved for two years by 20th Century Fox, and finally dumped into a handful of secondary markets for a few weeks around Labor Day 2006 (The Dead Zone of the movie release schedule, for those who don't know) with no promotion or marketing whatsoever (hell, there wasn't even a website for it). Even more interestingly, Judge will not (or, more likely, is not allowed to) speak about the movie, and Fox has been evasive in their dealings with the media over it, so there is an air of mystery surrounding Idiocracy that adds to the viewing experience, though an awful lot of questions are raised in the end as well.

Considering what incredibly shoddy treatment was accorded this film, the appearance of Idiocracy on DVD might be construed as a minor miracle until one cynically realizes that this would likely be the only way for 20th Century Fox to ever recoup their investment in the project. So, a multi-billion dollar corporation so apparently disenchanted with their multi-million dollar product decides to release it anyway in the hopes of scraping up a few bucks (possibly to finance another Garfield sequel)? Heh. Typical.

Problem is, Idiocracy doesn't suck, which makes all the above even more puzzling.

The central idea of Idiocracy is that humanity, blessed with technology that helps extend and enhance the quality of life and untroubled by natural predators, has become so dominant that the old idea of the survival of the fittest no longer applies. In fact, the opposite starts to happen as the 21st Century gets under way: as the most intelligent people put off having children (and have much smaller families, if any families at all, as a result), while the trailer parks and Mayberry citizens of the world wildly procreate and change the direction of humanity until, by the 26th Century, the entire population of the Earth comes off like some unholy fusion of Billy Madison, Al Bundy and Larry The Cable Guy (I'll add here that it's best to not ask yourself too many questions as to exactly how this world works when the population is so incredibly stupid that they can't even spell it: this movie has enough problems as it is).

Thrust into this future hell (as a result of an present-day Army experiment gone forgotten ... didn't this also happen in Futurama?) is dead-average slacker Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), who instantly finds himself the smartest man on Earth by leaps and bounds, and who quite understandably wants nothing more than to find a way, any way, back to the present.

Sarah and I watched Idiocracy the other night, and a couple of things stuck with me after it was over:

• It is obvious that something was done to Idiocracy (apparently a year after its initial completion), to make it more "saleable" to a mass audience (who would ironically never see it in a theater anyway). Some of the scenes seem to be buying time, as if someone decided for budgetary reasons to cut corners and replace an idea with another return to the "where is that time machine at" subplot. Perhaps the most glaring example of this apparent meddling is the narration which runs throughout the movie: something about it feels weirdly out-of-sync with the rest of the film, and there is a bit too much explaining done as we move onwards, which suggests many planned scenes were either snipped from the final cut or never shot at all. Of course, neither 20th Century Fox or Judge is talking, so it might be years, if ever, before we know exactly what happened behind the scenes here.


• Idiocracy is an angry, vicious screed against modern culture, particularly the championing of ignorance and the rampant, uncontested corporate takeover of every niche of our existence. Stripped of all the (deliberately) lowbrow jokes that get us laughing as well as driving the point home at just how far along we are to realizing this future reality, Idiocracy would be impossible to enjoy, so palpable is Judge's disgust for the dumbing-down of our society at all levels (I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is hardly the kind of film you can show commercials for alongside Norbit).

While this is not the surprise gut-buster that Office Space was, there are several parts of Idiocracy that had me laughing aloud (the circular argument in Washington D.C. over how to properly grow crops, the guy on the hospital P.A. attempting to alert doctors to phone calls/patient appointments, the enhanced role of dinosaurs in political history, and the preferred popular source of 26th Century news were a few favorite bits), while other sequences (like the very formulaic final 20-25 minutes of the film) left me wondering if scenes were cut out or added in by Judge or the studio based on budget restraints or executive meddling.

Nowhere near as amusing, but far better overall, is Alfonso Cuarón's Children Of Men, which drops us just a mere twenty years into the future. You'll probably wish it was 500 years, though: in 2027, there have been no new children for nearly two decades (in fact, the youngest man on Earth has just died under tragic circumstances), and the world has gone completely to hell as a result. We are never told what exactly happened, or why, or how, just that women haven't been conceiving (either that or men have not been doing their part very well), and that everyone who is not busy being blown up, shot, or deported is simply going through the motions of life and waiting for The End Of Times: as one spray-painted sign memorably reads: THE LAST ONE TO DIE, PLEASE REMEMBER TO TURN OUT THE LIGHT.

As it happens, some parts of the world are far better off than others: we are shown early on from TV imagery that the only functioning government left on the planet is that of the United Kingdom, and as a result everyone from everywhere else in the world wants in, while everyone already living in England wants them out. Political schisms have developed throughout society as "terrorist" human rights groups resort to violence to get their point across while the government and military utilize authoritarian methods to resolve the problem of rampant illegal immigration.
In the midst of this roiling chaos, Theo (Clive Owen) simply tries to keep his head down by working at the Ministry Of Energy and spending his free time with his retired political cartoonist friend Jasper (Michael Caine). What little of Theo's regular life we are shown is suddenly shattered when he is kidnapped and asked by a "terrorist" group led by his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) to secure transit papers from high-up for an illegal immigrant named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) under mysterious circumstances. Theo reluctantly agrees, secures the needed papers from his brother Nigel (Danny Huston) who apparently lives in Battersea Power Station (and must be a huge Pink Floyd fan), and starts off on the remarkably-realized journey that makes up the rest of this movie.

I don't want to get into what happens after this point, since the relentless forward momentum of this film after Theo meets Ke is best experienced unspoiled for full shocking effect. And I do mean "shocking" since Children Of Men is not for the faint of heart: Cuaron pulls no punches in showing us the broken down, desperate remnants of English society. We hardly ever feel safe or that the characters can rest since situations we are watching become unexpectedly complicated by sudden violence that happens right before our eyes. Unforeseen developments keep us off-balance as well, and we're never sure which characters we can trust.

I'll be curious to hear what you think of these movies as they both made me think. Idiocracy is worth a view, though ultimately you'll likely wonder at what might have been. Children Of Men, on the other hand, will probably leave you as haunted and drained: this is one of the most thought-provoking and chilling films I have seen in some time and I definitely regret missing it on the big screen. I hope you'll feel the same.

Idiocracy rating: 3/5
Children Of Men rating: 5/5