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Movie Review: The Children of Men
If Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” had you heading for your nearest hybrid-car dealer, “Children of Men” will have you wishing that saving the planet was as easy as reversing global warming. Director Alfonso Cuarón has taken P.D. James’ novel and created a frighteningly realistic apocalyptic vision of the future of the human race. One can only hope, after seeing the movie, that Cuarón is not psychic, that the world he envisions will never come to exist. The problem is that “Children of Men” takes place in the not-too-distant future and the geopolitical and environmental circumstances that have brought humans to the brink of extinction are either already playing out on a global scale today or seem entirely plausible.
The story begins in 2027, on the day that the youngest living human being, an 18-year-old called Baby Diego, has been murdered by an angry autograph seeker (can you say ‘celebrity stalker’?). Humans have become infertile and unable to reproduce. It could be the gamma rays. It could be pollution. No one knows. But it doesn’t take a mental or scientific leap to come up with a few more scenarios not even mentioned in the film that could have the same effect (heat from laptops impinging on sperm quality, all those estrogen mimics in our microwaveable plastics?). Any attempt to relax and enjoy a futuristic romp that could never happen in real life is immediately thwarted. (It happened to the California Condor. If it happens to us, will someone be there to collect mating pairs, house us in captivity and release us back into the, um, wild?)
On the day of Baby Diego’s death, we travel with our accidental hero Theo (Clive Owen) through London, the last bastion of ‘civilized’ society. The city has become a war zone. It looks just like those you might have seen lately on CNN. Cars and buses are dilapidated heaps, frozen in time, much like the 1960s models that travel the streets of Havana today. Immigrants are hunted, caged like animals and then transported to internment camps, reminiscent of Nazi death camps. IRA-style insurgents roam the land plotting for the ‘uprising’ and adding to the violence and death that lurks behind every corner.
Theo’s estranged wife, Julian (Julianne Moore), has become a leader in one of these revolutionary organizations. She kidnaps Theo and makes him an offer he can’t refuse. She convinces him to use his position to gain coveted transit papers that will allow a mysterious immigrant girl to escape the country to safety. But the cover story he devises (paired with a little greed) means that he must accompany the girl – who turns out to be miraculously eight-months pregnant.
By the time we meet pregnant Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), we are ready for a little ray of sunshine in Cuarón’s bleak world. Of course, she and her unborn baby are in mortal danger because some of the more Machiavellian revolutionaries want to exploit the child to fuel their uprising, said revolutionaries and their followers also mercilessly hunted by the government. It is up to Theo to take her to a meeting set up by Julian with the Human Project - what we can only guess is a California-condor style captive breeding program. Theo must get Kee to the rendezvous point with the Project’s ship (called the “Tomorrow,” of course) if humanity has any hope of survival. Their journey, of course, is horrific (see if you can spot the carcass of a fetal pig on the side of the road. I would recognize one anywhere after Intro Bio Lab).
And, just as carefully as London is portrayed as having the most nightmarish elements of today’s cities, the characters in this story are portrayed as all-too-human. Our hero is fond of whiskey in his morning coffee, the brave Kee doesn’t know her baby’s father’s name. The father figure in Theo’s life, Jasper (Michael Cane) is partial to the ol’ ‘pull my finger’ joke, complete with its audible punch-line. They all respond to the horrors of living in that world--and the miracle they discover--in wholly believable ways.
“Children of Men” is a haunting story told by a master filmmaker using a stellar cast and frighteningly realistic sets. Which makes it even harder to remember that it really is just a movie.
