Title: Children of Men
Genre: Action/Drama/Sport
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine…
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Release: (2006)
Children of Men is a deceptively confounded thriller. Deceptively, because the attention to detail in both the characters and the story are handled skillfully enough that they might, at first glance, appear to be brilliant. Confounded, because what all of those clever little details are dressing up is the fact that almost none of the major plot points make any sense.
The story begins in Britain, 2027, on a day when the world stops to mourn the murder of the youngest man alive. Ever since humans lost the ability to reproduce, the world has fallen into chaos and youth has become a commodity. The last person ever born became, naturally, an international celebrity and his murder reminds all mankind of the impending mortality of the species. As governments struggle to maintain martial law, rebel groups run amok and the streets have become fair game for anyone. Clive Owen plays Theo, a former rebel leader who has lost his will to fight since a family tragedy struck some years prior. Julianne Moore plays his ex-wife Julian, who has continued the struggle without him and finds herself in need of his help when she discovers a young girl with a miraculous secret – she is pregnant. Together they work to transport the girl through a steeplechase of friends, foes and phonies, beyond the brutal government guards charged with keeping the borders sealed and deliver her to a secretive rebel island, where scientists are working to save the future of mankind.
There are two ways to judge this movie, on its message and on its content. Well, I suppose you could also judge it on its sound quality, or set design, or profit margin, but there are only two ways that I’m going to judge it. Let me start first with the message. In a tight 109 minutes, director Alfonso Cuarón packs a philosophical wallop into this film. Touching on just about every hot topic in the world today, from the general (including nature of government vs. insurgent propaganda, sacrificing freedoms to government agencies for perceived safety, who is or isn’t considered a terrorist), to the specific (Guantanemo Bay tactics, Homeland Security, Muslim extremism) – the messages are pretty hard to miss. It is in weaving together such a comprehensive picture of a believable, worst-case scenario for a world where these situations remain unchecked that Children of Men has gathered much praise. Unfortunately, the story on which they are all based is fundamentally flawed enough to undermine much of the significance of any valid points made.
This brings us to the content. Perhaps I glossed over this before, but the movie is set in the near future at a time when humans have lost the ability to reproduce. For some reason. But hope arrives in the form of one single girl who becomes pregnant. For some reason. (And not by immaculate conception, in case you think that’s the explanation). And though they are running scared from government detection to secretly get her to an island they believe to be the only safe place (for some reason), when they are eventually detected and seemingly captured, an entire army battalion decides to just let them walk away freely and continue fighting just the other riff-raff rebels. For some reason. (That’s not really a spoiler, just an annoying moment). Plus, even if all that could be reasonably explained, does it make sense that so many people in Britain would just continue going on with life as usual? Coffee in the morning, going to work, all day in a cubicle, etc… Would you live your life that way if you knew there was no possible way you would have to worry about supporting or leaving anything to your kids – or anyone’s? And wouldn’t there be at least some degree of a new sexual revolution among people who are glad to not worry about getting pregnant? And how does the cutoff work for when people can’t get pregnant anymore? Is it a generational difference, like if you were ever able to have kids you always can, but your kids never can, until all those people die out? Or did it happen at a time point, so someone could have gotten pregnant at 23 but then all of a sudden couldn’t get pregnant anymore at 24? And why wouldn’t society turn to human cloning yet? (The answer is they would.) The more I thought about it, the more frustrating it became wondering how all of this is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past these content gaps to take any serious lessons away from the message. For example, why not also just speculate on the chaos that would reign and human savagery that would ensue if all of the animals in the world disappeared? A story about the discovery of one remaining cow by a small group of old PETA rebels and their quest to hide it from the starving, iron-deficient masses and deliver it to an island of scientists trying to figure out how to bring back the animal life of the world could expose all the same lessons on basic human nature as Children of Men. But that certainly wouldn’t make it a prescient glimpse into a future we’re barreling towards – just hypothetical pot-talk.
Which, if you look at it that way, Children of Men is probably pretty interesting.
Grading
Story: C-
Acting: A-
Visuals: A
Originality/Innovation: B+
Enjoyability: B
Overall: B+
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