Comparison Of Children Of Men And The Remains Of The Day

The three war films, Alfonzo Cuarón’s Children of Men, James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day, and the documentary A Painful Reminder, all showed consequences of wartime and how it connected with and affected society. Between the three films, they were able to show that war can affect not only a smaller group of individuals, but a whole population. The film Children of Men, directed by Alfonzo Cuarón, was a futuristic film set in 2027. Although, as the movie progresses, it is not the typical futuristic film with hovercrafts and intelligent technology, but a different view on contemporary society. Cuarón showed in his film the detrimental effects that war can have on a population. The movie is based in Great Britain, the last functioning government
The film shows the main character, James Stevens, bounce back from his life in the 1930s to his current life in the 1950s. Unlike the other two films discussed, this films does not show battle, but the consequences that war can have on society. The owner of the mansion where Mr. Steven worked, Lord Darlington, was a Nazi sympathizer and several times hosted parties for other fascists of Europe. Darlington only wanted to keep peace in Europe, and “hold onto the past” which meant believing Nazi propaganda and supporting Germany. Ivory was able to show throughout the films flashbacks the detrimental effects this had on Darlington. He lost his reputation as a gentlemen, and most people referred to the Darlington mansion as the building where the fascist, Nazi sympathizer lived. The running theme in this film was that holding onto the past can prove to be dangerous. Ivory was able to use flashbacks in the film to show how the past can have consequences in the
The films showed the horrors of the camps and the effects it had on the people inside. The ones who recorded these horrors were smart in the way they captured the evidence. They used long takes of wide-angled shots to prove what they were recording was real. By showing the landscapes behind the camps, it showed that these torture chambers were set in plain site. They were placed fields and woods, and often in populated cities. By showing the backgrounds of the camps, the directors were able to prove that the people of Germany or Poland, wherever the camps where located, were clearly ignoring what was going on. The effect of war in this society was that these people became desensitized to the situation and went on with their everyday lives because they were not being affected. Even though these films were not shown until nearly 40 years later, when the rest of the world found out about what was going on in these camps, the Germans had to quickly erase that evidence so they could pretend it had never happened. The Final Solution that happened toward the end of the war terminated a large amount of the existing Jews in the camps as the Allies were closing in. The Nazis tried to get rid of as much physical evidence they could to try to convince the people it had never happened. In this documentary, the existing films that