Movie Review: Children of Men

Children of Men is both a stunning tehcnical and storytelling achievement.  Even so, it is likely to leave American audiences, who have certain expectations when it comes to film style and trajectory somewhat disatisfied.

Set in England in 2027, the youngest person on the planet is killed in a riot at the age of 18.  The human race isn't under a threat of extinction, but rather on a schedule for it and the world is in chaos.  What type of chaos that is, we're not always sure.  Two character converse about their parents, one asking the other if they were in New York "when it happened."  The reply is a shrug and "What can you do?"  We never find out what they're talking about, but it's certainly not 9/11.

Terrorist groups, refugees, and religious fanatics litter the landscape as surely as refuse, corpses and charred animals.  Into this come the Fishes, a group that one could argue about the terrorist or freedome fighter status of if they weren't coming apart from the inside.  They have come into the possession of a young woman named Kee (that this movie isn't more heavy handed with names like that is a testament to the skill with which it is crafted) who is pregnant.  8 months pregnant.  The first woman to achieve this in almost two decades.  She herself has never even seen another pregnant woman, and she must be gotten to the coast in tralve restricted totalitarian England to meet up with a boat called Tomorrow sailed by the possibly mythical Human Project that is working on saving the species from extinction.

Through a series of coincidences Theo (Clive Owen) winds up being the one to escort Kee on this journey, protecting her from threats from all sides; the world doesn't have good guys and bad guys anymore and people are so convinced they are about to meet their end, that even when confronted with the reality of Kee's baby, soldiers quickly return to shooting, either unable to imagine or care what a girl baby means or simply far too unwilling to risk hope.

Children of Men is not about Kee or really even Theo.  Rather, it uses their terrifying roadtrip as a tour of the end of the world, a tour which includes Theo's pot-smoking buddy, an abandoned school, a refugee camp guard who only speaks of himself in the third person.  Everything isn't just horrifying, but also absurd.  Are there no shoes that fit at the end of the world?  What is the sense of the "Cultural Ark" project of which Theo's brother has been put in charge?  Who is he saving the David for?  (This segment, actually, is one of the most chilling of the film even as it is also one of its least horrific, and one of two amazing examples of the film's deft and moving use of pop music -- in this case King Crimson's Court of the Crimson King).

Children of Men asks more quesitons about its world that it answers, ultimately (hence my feeling it will leave American audiences disatisified).  Does a woman like Kee have any right to choice in a dying world?  and what does it really mean to go down fighting?  are two of the the most disturbing.

Alfonso Cuaron, who has consistently managed to surprise with his work (even his installment of the Harry Potter franchise established a darkness and complexity the films had prevously lacked), delivers on his potential and more here.  Much has been made of a long running single shot (that seems to get longer which each article I read about it), and it truly is an astounding, and really, shocking technical achievement that is so intense in its impact, it's only later that you really have the opportunity to marvel that it was achievable.

Clive Owen also finally delivers.  We've always known he was a great actor, but he's constantly been in films that don't quite work and haven't served him well (from the crappy but fun King Arthur to the vicious but flat Closer).  This is the movie he needed, even if his performance is, at times, hard to watch.

Children of Men contains many moments of astounding grief where one can't help but expect a swell of music and a moment for both the audience and the characters to grieve.  These are constantly cut short and seem to rob the film of an ethereal beauty one can't help but expect from it.  The thing is, the end of the world isn't patient or ethereal, and just as Theo doesn't have time to grieve for his losses, neither does the audience.  This is masterful, if unpleasant, on Cuaron's part and part of the sharp intelligence of the film.

Children of Men is violent and grotesque and riddled with uncomfortably dark humor.  It contains nearly constant violence and is preoccupied with torture, drug use and suicide.  It references not just the world as we fear it will become, but the world as it absolutely is now.  Many will complain that it is not, and should be, Kee's story -- women's stories being vastly undertold in cinema (a generalization I do heartily agree with).  But the value of Children of Men lays in, among other things, that it tells something of a rarer story -- that of those that inhabit the limbo of the road, that see others on their journeys but are never able to undertake a journey to end their own.