Children of Men (2006) - opening - analysis

Children of Men (2006) – the opening

Children of Men (2006) opens with the ‘Universal Pictures’ logo. This connotes that it will be a high quality/ high budget film due to the company being well known for its high quality films such as Jurassic park, Jaws and many more. After this logo comes up the ‘strike’ logo comes up on the screen. This suggests that this film is created/ produced by an independent company (strike) and distributed by Universal Pictures.

The screen then goes black and there is a voiceover, this connotes that the film is going to be dark and dramatic. During the voiceover a voice says ‘After 8 years, the British boarders will remain closed’, this suggests that the film is set in the future and that there are immigration problems which have caused problems to the UK and therefore they have shut the boarders. There is then a cut to a coffee shop where the audience then sees that the voice was coming from a floating TV.  This also informs the audience that the film is set in the future however, the coffee shop is very basic looking with just blue walls and some crockery this suggests that although the film is set in the future the country may not have very much money. There is low key lighting which connotes the future of the world will be bad in this film, the low key lighting also emphasises the amount of pollution and dust that is on the street which shows that it is not a healthy place for the people to be in. This is also shown by the amount of rubbish bags in the street near the end of the opening and foreshadows that the living quality has become worse in the UK.

 

There is a man that walks into the coffee shop. As this man leaves the coffee shop the camera tracks him. This shows the audience the man will be the main character/ one of the main characters in the film as the camera focuses on him.

The people in the coffee shop are wearing dark coloured clothes for example the man who walks into the coffee shop and tracked out of it is wearing clothes including a black jacket and black trousers. This suggests that the time the film is being based in, the world is going through bad times. This is also backed up by the fact that on the News it said ‘The world was stunned today by the death of Diego Ricardo the youngest man on the planet’ it then says ‘Baby Diego was 18 years old’. This shows that there is something bad happening to the world because there must be a reason that the youngest person is of today’s adult age (18) and he is classed as a baby due to being the youngest person on the planet.  

It is clear to the viewer that the film will portray the issues of crime that will come in the future and how the crime is getting worse as it starts with one murder of Diego and then develops straight away by numerous deaths in the coffee shop due to a bomb. The atmosphere of the film is very sad because of the crime that has happened (baby Diego being murdered and a bomb in the coffee shop).  

 

Due to the crime in the film the genre is ‘crime’ but the film is also ‘science fiction’. The reason for the film also being a ‘science fiction’ genre is because it is talking about the future of the planet (the film is based in 2027) however, the film is fictional because babies have been born since 2009. I also think this film would stereotypically be aimed at men over the age of 15 because of the high level of crime may be frightening to children as because many women like happy films such as romantic comedies.

In this film opening the camera starts tracking/ focusing in on the main character near the start to make it clear to the audience who this is. I liked the way that the film opening tracks the main character near the beginning and will consider doing this in my film to make it totally clear who the main character is.