Children of Men Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)January 25th, 2007
CHILDREN OF MEN
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2007 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
Mexican filmmakers made a bit of a splash in 2006, first with Alejandro González Iñárritu's globe-trotting--and muchos acclaimed--"Babel" (the Golden Globe Best Picture award winner already) and then Guillermo del Toro's visionary "Pan's Labyrinth," a foreign-language fantasy on too many Ten Best lists to mention.
Which brings us to "Children of Men."
Like del Toro's film before it (or after it, depending on which city you hail from), Alfonso Cuarón's loose but eminently satisfying adaptation of the P.D. James novel was ushered into a few key theaters in order to be eligible for the madcap movie awards season. Its buzz has been strong, especially among film critic circles, and that buzz is, for the most part, well deserved.
Cuarón, who brought us the essential version of Francis Hodgson Burnett's "The Little Princess," the very sexy road movie "Y Tu Mamá También," and Harry Potter 3, has fashioned a futuristic drama for our times, a bleak yet oddly optimistic look at a world that is, quite literally, dying out.
The year is 2027 and the human race has lost its ability to procreate following a flu-like epidemic. The Great British government, now ruled by a fascist dictator holed up below the famous cooling stacks of Battersea Power Station (replete with tethered Pink Floyd inflatable pig!) is rounding up all its legal immigrants--*fugees*--and threatening them with deportation. A former activist turned pen-pushing bureaucrat, Theo Faron (Clive Owen) watches as the anarchic, dystopian society around him crumbles. But passivity quickly turns to action when Theo's ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) recruits him to lead her motley band of revolutionaries to a rendezvous with an organization known as The Human Project, since Theo is one of the few people able to obtain the requisite transit documents. Theo only agrees to help, however, when he learns that one member of the group, a young black woman named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), is mysteriously pregnant.
The look of the film is impressive--burned out, washed out urban sprawl, rickshaws running through Dickensian London streets, graffiti, rats, *Quietus* euthanasia ads and hopelessness ever present--and its hapless characters are convincingly played (with Michael Caine's colorfully aging hippie a little too much contrast to the monochromatic morbidity). But its Cuarón who steps up to the plate and delivers some truly bravura sequences that raise the bar from merely competent to exhilarating filmmaking (the sequences in question all make full use of fluid, uninterrupted takes that will have you questioning how they managed to pull off such a stunt).
In print, James's 1992 "The Children of Men" was more intimate, and less cinematic, a vision of a chaotic future and Cuarón and his screenwriters have significantly changed the book's ebb and flow, keeping some of the character names and plot points the same but altering much. And this proves to be a critical success.
As gripping a thriller as it is provocative a human drama, "Children of Men" is an exciting, thought-provoking entertainment that transports us to a world that's a little too close for comfort. What *is* a comfort is the knowledge that there's a significant talent out there--Alfonso Cuarón--who possesses the ability to make films that continue to move, animate, and actively engage us.
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David N. Butterworth
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
