Children of Men

Title: Children of Men
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine
Year: 2006
MPAA: Rated R for strong violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity.
Date of Review: January 19, 2007


In Children of Men, Michael Caine plays the role of Jasper, a pot-smoking ex-political activist. In one of his ganja-inspired rants, he says that all life is "a battle between faith and chance". It is faith - our belief in what is truly right - that gets us where we are going in life, and brings us to the most crucial points of our existence. It is chance that decides the outcome of these events. He then goes on to say that if chance always gets the final word, and we don't really have any control over how things will turn out - whether for better or worse - then what is the point in having faith in the first place? Alfonso Cuaron's film tries to establish the fact that sometimes blind faith is just what is needed to keep us going, even if in our hearts we know that things will not work out for the better. This blind faith we have is called hope, and that is the theme of Cuaron's latest film.

It stars a wonderful ensemble cast, each person embodying the role fully, without one poor performance in the film. Clive Owen plays the central character, Theo, a depressed alcoholic and ex-political activist whose own hope died with the death of the youngest person in the world - an event which occurs at the beginning of the film, started it with a sense of bleakness and disaster right off the bat. Luckily Owen is met by a group whose hope has not yet died out - the Fishers, an underground movement led by Theo's ex-wife, Julian (played by Julianne Moore). Things take off from here, as Julian asks Theo to transport a young girl to the coast where she would be met by "The Human Project". Her importance is not known at first, but soon we find that this young girl is pregnant - and in a world where fertility seems to be nil, this young girl becomes the potential future saviour of mankind.

The word "saviour" is a hard one to attribute to the young Kee (played wonderfully by Claire-Hope Ashitey), as it almost always evokes biblical symbolism. While the tragedy befalling the world is of biblical proportions, Cuaron does not attempt to re-tell a chapter of the Bible, or give Jesus-like attributes to any of his characters. These are real people in the real world, and that is what often makes the film so hard to watch - it is almost too real. Children of Men does not seem far-fetched at all, nor does its date of 2027. In fact, it even uses next year - 2008 - as the year that humans began to stop having babies.

The world Cuaron has created is so frighteningly realistic that sometimes it's hard to forget that the film takes place in the future. Of course there are futuristic cars, and the computers and information technology is slightly more advanced, but nothing is so far ahead that it loses its believability. The cars are still on the ground, the computers still use monitors and keyboards, and cigarettes are still abundant. Anothe sci-fi world it could be compared to is that of Steven Spielberg's 2002 film Minority Report, where technology is several steps ahead of ours, but nothing in the film seems out of reach. But the most important thing about the film is the characters - they seem so human, with all the gifts and curses of humanity that we see every day. There is no super heroism, and there are no flawless characters; similarly there are no flat characters. These are real people, and some of them feel oddly familiar.

Something that simply must be noted about Children of Men is the stunning cinematography. It is filled with the long shots and mix of sweeping movements and very personal moments that made filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock so popular. At one point towards the end of the film, Theo is running through an urban battlefield - running through streets riddled with explosions and gunfire, in and out of buildings that crumble and explode around him - and it is all done in one shot, with the camera following closely behind him in an over-the-shoulder position. Technically speaking it is incredible, but it also makes this entire world come alive as we see every nook and cranny of this desolate wasteland as it is torn apart.

It is very important that teenagers and young adults see this film, because - to put it simply - it is about them. Most of the characters are in their late 30's or early 40's, meaning they were born from the late 1980's onward. While mass infertility may not be a problem that we ourselves face, the message in the film is abundantly clear. While faith and chance hold their sway, it is crucial that hope stay alive even in the darkest times, because the smallest bit of hope could determine the outcome of our entire civilization.

10 / 10