Review: Children of Men -- Kim's Take
Filed under: Drama, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, Universal, Theatrical Reviews
One of the most striking things in the days following 9/11 was the absence of air traffic. The sound of planes taking off and landing, the sight of jets zipping through the sky, have become such a part of the background noise of our lives, we noticed them only in their absence, and the silence of the skies in those couple days was deafening. The absence of children in the film Children of Men has much the same impact.
Imagine, if you will, a world without children. Not the temporary, blissful, child-free retreat of, say, a fancy restaurant, or a weekend away from the kids, but an entire world without a single child in it. No pregnant women, no families pushing strollers and shepherding toddlers, no preschoolers chasing bubbles, no schools or playgrounds, no kids building sandcastles or snowmen ... no future. The year is 2027, and for 18 years all the women on Earth have been infertile. From New York City to Paris, from South Africa to the South Pole, not a single baby has been born on the planet for nearly two decades.
This is the world of the not-too-distant future as brought to life by director Alfonso Cuarón in Children of Men, his adaptation of the P.D. James novel of the same name. In the aftermath of mass infertility, the world has collapsed, descending into nihilism, separatism and violence. England has closed its borders and is deporting foreign refugees ("fugees") like criminals. Soldiers, tanks and the sound of gunfire are everywhere. Theo (Clive Owen), a one-time political activist who has descended into the realm of ambivalence and bureaucracy, drifts through life aimlessly, lost in grief over the death of his son some years before in an influenza pandemic. He is a man whose life has lost all hope and meaning; his numbness, even as a coffee shop blows up seconds after he leaves it, reflects the tenor of the times in which he is living. The one bright spot in Theo's existence is his friend Jasper (Michael Caine), a fellow former activist who lives in a retreat deep in the woods.
Theo's life no longer has purpose -- until the day his ex-love, Julian (Julianne Moore) -- now heading up a band of rebels fighting for the rights of the refugees -- has him abducted and brought before her so that she can persuade him to obtain illegal transit papers to get Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a young refugee, safely to the coast. Theo reluctantly agrees to help, more because he wants the 5,000 pounds the group offers him to secure the papers than because he desires to get involved in anything resembling activism or intrigue. When Kee reveals to him why people are willing to die for her, though, Theo finds himself in the position of reluctantly holding the future in his hands.
If you've seen the trailer, or even the movie poster, you know what's so important about this girl: In a world of complete infertility, she is miraculously, inexplicably, pregnant. And from there, we sit back and watch the desperate race as Theo and Julian fight to get Kee to the mysterious group "The Human Project" -- a near-mythical organization believed to be working toward saving humanity -- before her baby is born.
Cuarón could not have cast better than in choosing Owen to play his Everyman; Owen imagines the despair and depression of a single man's world falling apart, then magnifies that to infinity, as one man whose inner darkness reflects a world that has given up hope. Fiesty Moore is the perfect foil to Owen's ambivalence. Where Theo has given up hope, Julian has latched onto her inner activist; if she goes out, it will be kicking and fighting all the way, and one can well imagine the bitingly intelligent Moore reacting in much the same way as her character to such desperate circumstances. Newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey is radiates both strength and uncertainty as the young girl who finds herself in the curious position of being the hope of mankind. A strong supporting cast filled with talent including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan, and a practically unrecognizable Caine bolsters the film as well.
Where some directors might have opted for making a sci-fi action film with flashy chase scenes, nifty futuristic special effects and gadgetry, and artsy camera angles, Cuarón has chosen instead to make a political and philosophical film. He holds up a mirror to our own worldview, reflecting back to us what we bring to it. Cuarón gives the environment equal weight with his characters, keeping the camera angles wide throughout and immersing us in the environment he's created. And a grim environment it is, with its dreary grey tones, gloomy lighting, bombed-out, war-zone look, and stone-faced soldiers hauling refugees off in buses reminiscent of concentration camp trains. It's no accident that Cuarón has set his film a mere 21 years in the future (the book is set 30 years distant, giving a little more breathing room); Children of Men is very much more a philosophical and political statement about the times in which we are living than a mere action-packed thriller.
We humans are a curious lot, dividing ourselves into alliances and enemies, by whim of chance and circumstance. In a world with no hope for a future beyond the present generation, would we support and help each other, or would we turn on our fellow humans like a pack of rabid dogs? Cuarón looks at the world as it is now -- people fighting and dying over whose religion is more "right," mass genocide in places like Rwanda and Sudan, children living in brutal poverty, even in countries with abundant overall wealth -- and overlays a vision of a world with no hope at all, to examine what might happen to humanity under such desperate conditions.
If you think Cuarón's vision of humanity is depressingly gloomy, well, it is -- all the more so because he's probably not too far off the mark. Cuarón blends art and religion, politics and war, into a seamless statement about mankind, and it's not a pretty sight. And yet, in spite of the darkness of the worldview presented here, Cuarón does not leave us completely bereft of hope; he shows us a flicker of light beneath the dark surface of anger and ambivalence with which he surrounds us. Children of Men raises more questions about the state of the world and our future than it answers; as to whether the film ends on a note of despair or hope for mankind, well, that depends, as Cuarón intended, on the philosophical view you bring to it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-25-2006 @ 7:57AM
chuck said...
Disliked it immensely. Struggled to sit through it only because of Owen.
Reply
12-25-2006 @ 10:24PM
Chris said...
From the trailer and the reviews I've seen this movie just sounds a little two slow to be good. The thing that comes to mind every time I hear the description for this movie is 'Y: The Last Man', which is not the same, but touches on some of the same ideas.
"Y: The Last Man is Vaughan's (Brian K. Vaughan) attempt to subvert the classic male fantasy of being the last man on earth. In the series, something (speculated to be a plague) simultaneously kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome - including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm - with the exception of Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his Capuchin monkey, Ampersand."
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y:_The_Last_Man
The first few trade paperbacks are out and I can't recommend them enough. I thought the idea sounded a little weak when I first heard it, but the implementation has been really interesting.
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12-26-2006 @ 10:31AM
spiderangelwing said...
Agree completely - a tremendous film. Film of the year for me.
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12-26-2006 @ 11:11PM
Joe said...
** SPOILERS HERE! **
I've seen it and I've found it to be just good. It's not sci-fi, really. I mean, c'mon... the story is about getting something from point A to point B, that's it.
The fact that the something is a pregnant girl in a sterile world is not all that important for the story. You could change her for a vaccine or a nuclear weapon or a box of burritos and the film wouldn't change a bit.
The people that get in touch with the baby don't change at all, even Owen's character dies at the end, so what possibility of change does he have?
The boat that supposedly picks her up is not clearly the "Human Project"'s so there is not enough change or importance to the fact of finding an, again supposedly, fertile woman.
So you see, there is not enough science, except for the fact that the human race is sterile.
Don't get me wrong, I liked it! it has some marvelous secuences (like the one when they are chased in the forest in the car, it's amazing!) and excelent photography.
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12-26-2006 @ 3:33PM
Kim Voynar said...
SPOILERS HERE TOO -- DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT!
Joe,
Children of Men is explicitly NOT a science fiction film -- read my interview with Cuaron (link to the right under "interviews") and you'll see that he says this repeatedly.
The issue of infertility as a symbol of the lack of hope for the future is paramount to the film, Joe. You can't be serious that you could substitute a burrito or whatever for a pregnant woman in an infertile world and have the same movie. If you really think that, then Cuaron's message was lost on you.
The death of Owen's character at the end is irrelevant -- we all die at the end, don't we? -- what's relevant is that he does change, from a man who has completely given up hope to a man willing to sacrifice himself FOR hope. That's his character arc.
The boat that picks her up at the end is the "Tomorrow", which is discussed earlier in the film as the boat that houses the mythical "The Human Project."
Cuaron deliberately left sci-fi, gadgetry and the reason for the infertility out of the film, because that wasn't the focus of the film at all. This is a film about the future of humanity, democracy, separatism, and the ways we treat each other, especially in times of crisis -- not a sci-fi film with an intricate explanation of science. It's about the characters and the environment within which they interact.
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12-27-2006 @ 3:20AM
dafnap said...
"Children of Men is explicitly NOT a science fiction film"
I'd beg to differ, even if Curon says as much himself. It's the very definition of Sci-Fi, using a scientifically probable future (whether it's explained or not is never really the issue, Star Trek may have techno babble, but you don't need to know how the warp engines work to get the rest of the story) to tell an intrinsically humanistic story. Almost all good sci-fi uses the technology and the theoretical science to tell a story that is at its core recognizable as the human condition.
Often times, BAD sci-fi sacrifices the characters to the plot, and unfortunatly there is a lot of bad sci fi out there.
"It's about the characters and the environment within which they interact."
That's sci-fi. Just, in some cases, the environments might have zero gravity :D
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12-27-2006 @ 7:24PM
Mark Salow said...
There is a struggle with the term "science fiction" in this commentary as well as in the published film director's views of it. The lack of focus on the science details support the contention that it's not science fiction.
We are talking about speculative fiction here. There is a fine line between the two, to be sure. However, this story and the film presentation of it classify it as speculative fiction and embracing this term would eliminate the need specifically address the concern that it's not science fiction.
Other films and stories are similar in nature. Books like 1984 and films like 12 Monkeys make social statements and don't delve very deeply into the future science. So, many editors and literary folk consider it speculative fiction. Embracing the term will help Hollywood and the authors who write about such films avoid the confusion.
At least, I think it would help.
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12-27-2006 @ 7:22PM
LastingMovie said...
" In a world of complete infertility, she is miraculously, inexplicably, pregnant. And from there, we sit back and watch the desperate race as Theo and Julian fight to get Kee to the mysterious group "The Human Project"
I like the movie illustration of the only hope for humanity. It is very diffrent compare to common movie but that's where this movie is unique. It give a diffrent perspective about our life why saving the world is important, why peace on the world is important.
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1-09-2007 @ 12:19PM
alene said...
***SPOILERS***
I love Cuaron, but what I don't get is why he changed things so drastically from the book? Also, he changed what I thought was the most critical element of the book, it's a story of redemption. Theo's character is seeking redemption sort of unaware that he is because he accidentally killed his son. In the movie they say his son died of illness, but in the book he had accidentally killed him, thus destroying his relationship with his exwife. So him saving the baby is his redemption, his chance to forgive himself.
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1-11-2007 @ 6:28PM
Miles Green said...
Im pretty sure you missed the point of the entire movie.
Abortions make human life a disposable thing. Children
of Men points out the extreme value
of human life and why it should never be thrown away.
The scene where Clive and the girl are walking out of the
building being attacked near the end, both sides stop fighting to
marvel at the miracle of life.
This is the point! Life is not disposable
and should never be thrown away.
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