Children of Men Film Analysis

Children Of Men

Children of Men is a science fiction action-thriller movie directed by Alfonso Cuaron in the year 2006. Starring by Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine. The movie plot takes place in London in a dystopic world in the year 2027. This dystopia is based on the loss of fertility in the world because of an infection that lasts for 18 years, lots of wars between countries, and loss of control at the borders of the country and because of this movement of thousands of illegal immigrants into England. In the movie, we can easily see the government is not properly working and is about to collapse and because of infertility all over the world, human life is about to be ended. In this analysis essay, I will be talking about the opening sequence of the movie which starts with our main character Theo (Clive Owen) watching the news at the coffee shop. First of all, I am planning to divide this analysis into different technical categories and the first part will be about the mise-en-scene. The second part will more focus on cinematography and how the director wanted to show the movie's world to the audience. The third and last analysis part will be about the editing and sound design of the whole sequence in order to emphasize how the director wanted to create a strong opening and give a sense of tension from the very first second of the movie. Finally, I will talk generally about the scene and how this scene designates the whole tempo of the movie and connects the audience from opening to ending.
Firstly, the mise-en-scene of this scene has a very important and impactful job for the rest of the movie because the audience has to be connected on the first seconds of the movie in order to get in the movie’s world, understanding the circumstances and the order of this fictional world, and shocked by the explosion at the end of the scene. The movie opens in a coffee shop which is full of people looking at the tv in a frightening way. In the mise-en-scene, we can easily see people are holding their coffees and bags, etc. in their hands and this is the sign of it is the earlier hours of the day. People on the shot are selected intentionally from every class of the society in order to give the sense of this news they are listening to is affecting everybody. We can see that there are young and old people, white-collar people, and students in the same scene. Then our character comes in and moves between the people and stops at the center and the focusing zone for the audience, orders a coffee, takes a look at the TV and turns around, and moves in in a reckless manner.
When Theo walks off the cafe and steps on the street, an establishing shot begins to show the world to the audience. In this scene, the title says it is  London, 2027 and we can see that the world is a bit chaotic. Also, the world doesn’t seem futuristic that we got used to in other science-fiction movies. The only thing we see technological is the entire wall of the building across the street is made of an enormous screen but we can also see this today. Other than this, we see a very polluted and bad-looking London. This idea is based on the coloring of the scene which we will be talking about in the cinematography section and the smokes coming out of the vehicles. Another interesting detail on this scene is, director, says to us it is 2027 but we can see there are lots of motorcycles with seats back on them that are used in traffic which is used more in the Asia region today. These motorcycles can seem like a little detail but in my opinion, the vehicles and the smoke they create is the biggest element in this scene to give the sense of this movie is about a dystopic world. Also, when the explosion happens the guy who rides a bike falls and there are some other people who gets injured because of the explosion are located very well in order to catch the audience's attention by their movement at the explosion moment.
Secondly, the scene starts with a high-angle shot in which a group of people looking at some higher point with frightened eyes in a small shop. Then, our main character enters the scene and moves in front of the people, orders a coffee, and looks at the same point as the other people. In the next shot, we see what people are looking at. From a low angle, the director shows us, at the corner of the coffee shop there is a tv which broadcasts news and on the news, the reporter talks about Baby Diego passed away (World's youngest person which means the last human born on the planet). Then the scene turns to Theo with a high-angle stable shot, Theo takes coffee turns away, and starts to walk to leave the shop while he is walking the stable camera makes a pedestal move and sets the camera angle to medium shot, and starts to tracking our character. When Theo gets to the door he turns left on the street but the camera pans to the right for an establishing shot to show the dystopic world. After an 8-10 second slow pan movement camera turns to the left and starts to track Theo again and sets the angle to the long shot. The camera tracks Theo and then Theo stops to pour whiskey in his coffee but the camera doesn't stop and moves around Theo from his right to his left in order to show the big explosion behind the Theo which happens right after the camera's movement has ended. 
The other side that needs to be discussed in is cinematography part is coloring and lighting. In this scene and for most of the rest of the movie, the director preferred colder colors but especially for this scene we can easily see that a color palette that is composed of colder tones and mostly dominant colder-darker blue tones. These tones are really helpful for the audience to get in the mood of the dystopic world of the movie and give a pessimistic mood to the people who are watching. Also the usual cloudy previously rained and very polluted air of London is very coherent with this color selection of director. The director choose to create natural lighting to not break the mood that he created with coloring and the whole opening sequence. Using more low-light (according to an ordinary day-light scene) in the coffee shop and setting the lighting closer to the natural light are all supporting the general mood of the scene.
Third and last analysis part is editing and sound design. The scene opens with a black screen and we start to hear the reporter on the news before seeing the visual. I think this technique creates curiosity for the audience and interest to follow and understand the plot. After the black screen, we directly see the frightened looks of people to some point and this selection of director is also boosts the curiosity and the tension of the viewer. In this shot we only hear the news, everyone carefully listens the news nobody is speaking and we cannot hear any outdoor voice nevertheless there is traffic and chaos outside. When Theo is right under the TV, music of ending credits of news from the TV volumes up and the second Theo steps on the street this music and noise of outside combines and creates a transition to the world. The traffic noise created very well to give the audience the sense of chaos. Also, in explosion sequence, the sound design has been made carefully to keep it real. People screams, car alarms and the noise of explosion itself shocks the viewer and make people tense.
First scene is very important for a movie to create the curiosity for the viewer and balance the tempo of whole movie. Alfonso Cuaron did a good job with his selections for this movie. The color grading and whole atmosphere doesn't change for the rest of the movie and pushes the audience to think about future. Our characters reckless attitude gives the sign of we will watch the character development of Theo for the rest of the movie. Death of Baby Diego at the first second throws the audience to a big problem and this creates much curiosity and suspense and this helps us to keep our interest to the movie.