Alfonso Cuarón: Children of Men (2006)

[Chris Knipp]

Alfonso Cuarón: Children of Men (2006)

Flash vs. substance

Review by Chris Knipp

My sense of the pointlessness of Alfonso Cuarón's badly written but flashily shot new sci-fi thriller, Children of Men, was heightened by seeing a good film later in the same late October day in Paris: Bruno Dumont's 2006 Cannes Grand Prix winner, Flandres. Flandres is about men pushed to their limits in situations we know are happening every day and have happened for millennia: young men leaving girlfriends, families, going to war, and coming back guilty and damaged. But as things tend to go, no one in the US is getting to see Flandres, while the man in the street is already proclaiming Children of Men the movie of the year.

In Children of Men it's 2027 and everything on the planet has gone wrong. Everything has gone wrong with the scenario, too. Nothing is explained, and nothing quite computes. Every country's been trashed, we're told (we see one news still per continent in a hasty rundown), except England. We've heard that one before. It's always down to the country where the film was shot, or is supposed to happen. Why England is considered not trashed, since every scene shows bombs going off, clashes in the street, general messes, and hordes of "aliens" being confined to cages and carted off to concentration camps, is a bit hard to figure. Cuarón's England of 21 years from now is a world of violence and repression worthy of Orwell's 1984; but like that story, this one has already passed its expiry date. It'll take a bit more then 21 years to reach this stage of decline.

Somehow there are groups with names like "the Fish" that have banded together to try to protect themselves in a world void of safety or trust. Though nobody knows why, all women are infertile now -- worldwide. (Other countries still exist; they just aren't worth shooting film footage in.) The youngest person on the planet has just died in Latin America--that is, the youngest guy; he was eighteen and something. A girl is now the youngest. So what?

Enter Clive Owen, our man in a pinch. He's rounded up by Julienne Moore, who's the head of the Fish and once was married to him. she wants his help getting somebody passage out of the area. He refuses, but is taken off to the country later anyway to meet Michael Caine, done up with long wavy white hair as an aging hippy with a deluxe hippy pad out in the woods, where he deals dope to prison guards, apparently. Warning: people die like flies in this movie, and though everything is elaborately worked out, nothing makes any particular sense.

It next emerges that a young English black woman is pregnant, and the project is to get her to safety. I didn't quite get why this led to her being taken into a prison camp teeming with weeping and wailing foreign nut cases, or why she was then led on to a full-scale rebellion in town and a large building that's gradually being blown to pieces. Eventually she makes it to a buoy and a boat named Tomorrow comes to pick her up. Symbolic, I guess.

This movie is a chaotic actioner robbed of real content. How did the world go so wrong? Why all the violence and disorder? Haven't scientist's got any idea about this global infertility? And by the way, how is one child going to help? If only one woman is fertile, will siblings have to mate? Won't that be unhealthy? And won't that take a good long while? What about the general disorder? What has the xenophobia got to do with the infertility?

What we have here is just an excuse for a lot of ersatz violence, which one can't care about since one doesn't know its cause -- except the government's rounding up of all aliens in cages and concentration camps. And why on earth do Clive and the pregnant girl wind up in that camp and the crumbling building during the insurrection? And in a pitched battle with bombs going off, why do they rush to the top of a building? It seems as though the general urgency is just supposed to be a given we must accept. I don't. Children of Men is disturbing, unpleasant, and confusing. A number of quite good actors are wasted in it. What possessed Cuarón to take on this project?

[For the rest of the review, go to the review (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?1883-Bruno-Dumont-Flandres-%282006%29) of Bruno Dumont's Flandres.

[mouton]

CHILDREN OF MEN
Written by Alfonso Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron


The trouble with foretelling the future in film is that you need to make it credible. The viewer must be almost instantly immersed in a world that is unlike their own, be it entirely or just slightly. If successful, the viewer has the potential to form insights regarding the world they currently live in based on where it looks to be headed. If it fails, every intention the director weaves into the film will be lost on untrusting eyes. Alfonso Cuaron’s near apocalyptic CHILDREN OF MEN opens in a coffee shop in London where the patrons stare in a state of numbed shock at the newscast that announces the death of the world’s youngest human being. Baby Diego was all of 18 years old. There is no one younger because the human race has inexplicably stopped reproducing. The film is set only 20 years from now. Unfortunately, by carefully avoiding over-explaining how humanity got to this point, CHILDREN OF MEN misses achieving that level of authenticity necessary to fully engross the viewer, albeit just narrowly. Yet as more time is spent with the characters of this future, it somehow transforms into a compelling testament to the hope that keeps humanity going no matter how dire the state of the world. Given our current sliding slope towards an increased spread of apathy and despair, Cuaron has crafted an important film that serves as both a reminder and a tool to unify the global population … or at least the film-going one.

Part of the reason CHILDREN OF MEN fails to convince from the start is because of another device designed to foretell the future, the movie preview. To draw us into the intensity of the film, the preview shows an explosion that lead character, Theo (Clive Owen), just misses being killed in. This scene takes place early in the film and, given that this particular preview has been running even longer than most as the release was delayed by three months, the knowledge that the bomb is coming detaches the viewer as they brace for the blast. Had it been a genuine surprise, the shock itself would have served to announce the severity of the times, leaving the viewer as frightened and uneasy as the Londoners of 2027. The missing desperation allows for more time to make sense of what defines this future. While Cuaron’s clues to explain humanity’s collapse are clever and creative, the viewer is still left alone to play catch-up, trying to piece everything together on their own. Of course, it becomes clear that understanding how it happened is entirely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that’s where the road leads but the ground is not solid enough to get a good bearing, making it difficult to see past the details.

Surprisingly, the film is still surprising. And thankfully, once it does catch you off guard, it continues to do so until you understand what it means to need to survive at all costs. Theo must deliver Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) to The Human Project, a group of the world’s greatest minds dedicated to the rebirth of the human race. At the risk of pointing out the film’s obvious symbolism, Kee is the “key” to this project as she is the first woman to conceive a child since Diego. Her miracle, although unexplained, inspires everyone she encounters to do right by her and protect her unborn child. As those who are accustomed to varying degrees of selfishness shed their ego-serving ways, their true colors shine through. Even those are meant to stop Kee so that they can use her baby to further their own purposes in the world ahead, from underground terrorists to an army that doesn’t care who they blow up as long as something is being destroyed, are powerless in the presence of the potential savior she is carrying. It’s as though everyone has given up and decided that their actions are meaningless and Kee’s baby gives them a hope so pure it is unlike anything they ever knew before all the trouble began, as if they too are reborn along with the child.

What was impossible to imagine at the start becomes so vividly real that the viewer cannot help but be wrapped up in the urgency of Kee’s need for a successful mission. Cuaron gives no reason at any time to think CHILDREN OF MEN will have to end happily out of a necessity to appease its audience. He makes every step of Kee’s journey arduous and exhausting. After all, she is over eight months pregnant; her odyssey would be hard for anyone. Only she is not simply carrying a child. She is carrying the fate of humanity at a moment in history that could mean the difference between a chance to begin again or an otherwise likely extinction. Being only 20 years away, there could already be a “Kee” amongst us. Though hope sometimes feels difficult to muster, CHILDREN OF MEN shows us we will find it again when we least expect to and it will keep us alive when we need it most.

[Chris Knipp]

Kyle Smith of the New York Post is one of many writers who have noted that the movie raises more questions than it answers:
The story, based on P.D. James' novel, grabs you at first, but its grip slackens as the unanswered questions and murky plot developments add up. In addition to saving the girl, you want Theo to solve several mysteries: Is this really the only pregnancy? If so, what is different about this woman? Why did all women become sterile back in 2009? Who exactly can he trust?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12222006/entertainment/movies/from_here_to_no_maternity_movies_kyle_smith.htm?pa ge=2 You and I seem to be agreed on this one--at least on the weaknesses and gaps of the premises. Of the three big mainstream movies young Mexican directors have shown us lately--Innauritu's Babel, Cuaron's Children of Men, and del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, I am convinced that Babel is the best by a far margin, but many are enchanted by all three or by one of the others. My strong gut feeling is that despite its pretentions, Babel comes closest to making the best use of its maker's and his team's undeniable gifts.

In the case of Children of Men, maybe we ought to go to look at the novel by P.D. James to find out what Cuaron's committee of writers cut out that ought to have been left in--that's my suspicion.

I find it hard to believe that any one person is ever going to be carrying the "fate of humanity." That is just too pat for me.

[mouton]

I did have a similar thought. Is she the only pregnant woman? I guess the film is telling us this story as it is the first pregnancy to happen. There may be more, there may not. Just more unanswered questions. I was more moved I suppose by how everyone gave of themselves to protect this woman and her child.

I have yet to see Pan's Labirynth but I would agree that Babel is superior to Children of Men. Howwever, I have my issues with that one too.

[Chris Knipp]

They all three have issues, but there is a sense of relative success I think. Pan's Labyrinth isn't my favorite but it has its points; all three show accomplishment and talent; the question is whether it is used effectively. I feel like Babel gives you the most meat in human terms.