CHILDREN OF MEN (R) ****

 

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron. 109 minutes.

Starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan and Pam Ferris. Released by Universal Pictures.

 

Joining the ranks of great dystopian fantasies such as A Clockwork Orange and Time of the Wolf, director Alfonso Cuaron’s remarkable Children of Men may be this year’s most overlooked film. Critics seem to really like it, but the film has been mostly nonexistent on top ten lists and Universal Studios has seemingly played down its advertising of the bleak picture, which was originally set to open fairly wide on Christmas Day. Regardless, Children of Men is one of the most stunning films I’ve seen all year – in part a hopeless, nihilistic and, potentially, on-point view of our future on this planet, part social allegory and part war zone thriller. In all three arenas, it succeeds mightily.

 

Clive Owen plays the borderline alcoholic anti-hero we would expect in such a film, but does it with grace and a world-worn sensibility. At the film’s beginning, we hear of the death of the world’s youngest person – an 18-year-old from South America. Wait, let me rewind. The scene is set in London in the year 2027, though the whole world is in the same boat – in a Margaret Atwood-esque twist, woman can no longer reproduce, therefore making mankind by default a dying race. Theo (Owen) hangs out and smokes dope with his ex-hippie pal, played lovingly by Michael Caine. But then he is kidnapped by an underground movement, of sorts, which is led by his ex-wife (Julianne Moore), with whom he once had a child which died very young.

 

She asks him to transport a young woman to a place called The Human Project, which is never quite explained, but one in which we can assume some utopia is available amongst all of the dystopia. It turns out that Theo’s passenger is a pregnant woman. Some twists come early on and we have a difficult time distinguishing who can be trusted and who can not. Cuaron’s view of human beings, at many times during the film, is one of watching out of the corner of one’s eye. Much of Children of Men is sequences of Theo and his fellow traveler hiding out or running. The film’s last quarter is a mind-blowing set piece, in which the pair bobs and weaves throughout a war zone that looks straight out of Bosnia. Cuaron follows Owen into a blown-out building and up the stairs in a remarkable continual shot. The entirety of the battle zone sequences reflect the director’s mastery of timing and set pieces. Special effects and explosions are used to maximum effect, rather to set the scene, rather than to be show-offy.

 

The entire film has a dreamy quality to it, which is punctuated by the terrific handheld camera work, an example of how the style can be used at its best, and a soundtrack filled with sad Beatles songs and covers of classic rock tunes. Characters pop up throughout the film, but quickly disappear into the background after they have served their purpose. Cuaron also delivers a sociopolitical message about the treatment of immigrants in the film, somehow shoving not-so-subtle images of refugees having bags shoved over their faces a la Guantanamo Bay, but still manages to give the scenes the feeling of subtlety.

 

There is a lovely, haunting shot of two characters in a boat at the film’s end, which reminded me a bit of Theo Angelopolous’ The Weeping Meadow, but also war scenes that remind me of Ulysses’ Gaze and numerous on the road sequences that brought Landscapes in the Mist to mind. I could be going out on a limb here, but the fact that Owen’s character’s name is Theo is obviously because the film is based on a 1992 novel of the same name by P.D. James, but these stylistic touches may or may not be an homage to the Greek director.

 

In any matter, Children of Men is one of the most accomplished films of the year. Cuaron is shaping up to be one of the most interesting directors to watch with this film, Y Tu Mama Tambien and a solid entry in the Harry Potter series, excluding Great Expectations. Most films set in the future make the mistake of continually bringing our attention to the fact that its story is set in the future, often relying too heavily on the notion that our world will look radically different in a matter of just a few decades. Cuaron earns points for visualizing a future that looks much like our present, but exaggerating our current problems until they run rampant. He plays upon human nature’s past and present troubles to create the type of troubled world that may not be too far into the world of fantasy. It’s a visionary film.