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Children of Men

(2006)

114 min. Universal Pictures. Director: Alfonso Cuaron. Cast: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam.

"When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they're not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They're upset because they've gone from supervisor of a child's life to a spectator. It's like being the vice president of the United States." —Erma Bombeck

Even celebrity mom Erma Bombeck couldn't have imagined the nightmarish future dystopia posited by P.D. James in her novel Children of Men, in which children have vacated in a big way. The world is an empty nest: it's been nineteen years since a child was born, and the rapidly graying population indeed feels—globally and personally—the unsettlement of power. As brought to the screen by celebrated Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Children of Men traces a grueling journey through a scary post-postmodern landscape.

2027 London—a plausible extension of today's teeming, incipient panglobalism—is at war with itself: there, a totalitarian government busies itself rooting out illegal 'fugees (refugees from countries that have already succeeded in tearing themselves apart) to protect national interests. Clive Owen plays Theo, a poker-faced London bureaucrat who has buried his activist tendencies in an attempt to stay safe and sane.

Theo's safety and sanity are immediately threatened, first by an urban terrorist bombing (on the occasion of the death of eighteen-year-old "Baby Diego," the world's youngest human) and then by the brusque return of Julian (Julianne Moore), Theo's former fellow activist...and ex-lover. Julian wants Theo to facilitate the smuggling of a strategically important rebel 'fugee named Kee (Claire Hope-Ashitey); for love and money, Theo reluctantly agrees. But events conspire to draw Theo further into danger, activism, and what may be the world's last hope for survival.

In Cuarón's highly-skilled hands, Children of Men continuously threatens to develop into something more fascinating than it is. A fetchingly Kubrickian tone—despite its emotional numbness—serves the film's ticklish dystopian vision: an "Ark of Arts" museum that lines up Michelangelo's David, Picasso's Guernica, and Pink Floyd's Animals; howling, snapping pop music dubbed "zen music"; and sinister signage that would be at home in either Orwell's 1984 or Terry Gilliam's comedic reinvention of it, Brazil ("Report Any Suspicious Activity," "Infertility is God's Punishment," "Quietus: You Decide When").

The rueful humor reaches its apogee with the introduction of Michael Caine as a hippie rebel living in the countryside (the veteran actor once again proves why he's one of film's most precious unrenewable natural resources), but the film is defined by a grim bleakness that sets us up for the conclusion that, despite it all, humanity will find a way to persist. The film's final image promises that, no matter how bad things get, hope of renewal springs eternal, but the image is so unnecessarily blatant as to leave an unintended, bitter aftertaste to the film.

Still, Children of Men is an uncommonly well-made adult entertainment. Cuarón's impressive craft (he also co-wrote and co-edited the film) is abetted by his invaluable cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki. Viscerally, the film pivots on a harrowing, twelve-minute, apparently single-take action sequence experienced from within a speeding car. Elsewhere, the camera hovers and swoops and fields blood spatter as Theo navigates all-too-common settings: an Abu Ghraib-like refugee camp and bombed-out city streets under fire. The film's most persistent imagery, however, likens man to animal—one more amongst cats, dogs, chickens, sheep, and deer—with one key exception: we can build our own arks and, in doing so, perhaps repopulate those empty nests.

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