Red Digital Readout

What a terrifying film this is. Many sci-fi and horror films use monsters and aliens and psychotic killers to generate temporary fear, but Alfonso Cuarón’s "Children of Men" has a premise so diabolical that I am hard pressed to think of one to match it in sheer dread.

We are introduced to London, circa 2027. For reasons unknown, humanity has ceased to be fertile. The youngest person on the planet is 18 years old, such a worldwide celebrity that his murder provokes an outcry that makes the one caused by Princess Diana’s death seem tame. Many have no memory of what children even look like.

It’s a world that simultaneously seems unrecognizable and painfully familiar. Britain’s geographic position makes it the sole remaining power, one ruled by a fascist government that herds hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into concentration camps that bring images of the Holocaust to mind. Bombs blow people apart at coffee shops and stormtroopers viciously beat and gun down immigrants on sight. The rebel organization fighting against the government lends credence to the belief that "freedom fighter" is merely a euphemism for "terrorist."

The contemplation of one’s demise is hard enough on its own. Here, the death of each person represents not only an individual end, but also a step towards the curtain call of the entire human race. We’re watching not just the characters, but humanity itself as a bloated, decaying organism, collapsing on itself in unbridled fear. And with the cruelty and hatred of man blazing full force, we reluctantly ask ourselves, do we even deserve to survive as a species?

Theo Faron (Clive Owen) doesn’t seem like a man who would think so. A bored office drone who lost his concern for life when his infant son died 20 years ago, he survives a horrific bombing, only to trudge to work and fake despair to get the day off. Things begin to turn around when Julian (Julianne Moore), his ex-wife and now terror cell leader, recruits (read: bribes) him to secure travel papers from his cousin, a government subsidized artist.

In a brief scene that paints the human condition as well as any film this year, Theo asks his cousin how he continues to produce art even though in less than a hundred years no one on earth will be around to see it. The cousin smiles and simply replies "I just don’t think about it."

The papers are for Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a young woman of seemingly minute importance. That is, until she brings Theo aside and reveals her very pregnant figure. In the blink of an eye, reality has warped yet again, and hope, which has been an antiquated notion for two decades, has returned in force. Theo tries to get Kee and her miraculous baby to a near-mythical group of scientists that may or may not actually exist, with the help of Miriam (Pam Ferris), a midwife who was at the front lines of humanity’s disintegration, and Jasper (Michael Caine), a political cartoonist turned pot grower.

Cuarón’s direction and the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki are nothing short of stunning. The documentary style shots are very long and thoughtful, rarely cutting even when it seems impossible that the camera could hold its place. A long shot seen from entirely within an SUV has the characters go from idle chitchat to running for their lives from a mob and the police. And a battle sequence throughout a concentration camp has scores of gunfire, dead bodies, tanks and explosions, all without a cut. I would accuse Cuarón of trying too hard to artistically top directors such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg if he didn’t actually succeed so well at doing so.

But the most moving and memorable component of "Children of Men" is in the story. By illustrating the stark brutality of mankind, Cuarón highlights what makes us worth saving. It takes violence and evil to make kindness, perseverance, and sacrifice truly inspiring. That a film this scary and tragic can imbue the viewer with such hope truly is a miracle.

5 out of 5

# posted by James : 7:46 AM