Children of Men
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Written by Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby
Starring Clive Owen, Michael Caine and Julianne Moore
Classification: 14A
Rating: ****
"Very odd what happens to the world without the sound of children's voices."
Instantly up to speed and powered by that rarest of cinematic fuels - intelligent action - Children of Men is a nativity story for the ages, this or any other. A dazzling pre-credit sequence sets both the fast pace and the dark tone. London, November, 2027, where the skies are grey and the denizens are nervous and terrorist bombs are exploding in Fleet Street shops. Yes, it's a near future that bears an uncanny resemblance to the present, save for the hot story that has the media buzzing: "The youngest person on the planet has just died." The deceased was 18.
For nearly two decades, our species has failed to reproduce itself; humankind has become infertile. But this premise, like all the exposition that follows, is never allowed to slap us in the face. Rather, it sneaks up with eerie stealth, growing organically from casual asides embedded in the dialogue or from subtle images planted at the edges of the frame. That adroitness shouldn't be surprising. Whether it's a road movie ( Y Tu Mama Tambien) or a literary adaptation ( Great Expectations) or a franchise picture ( Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), director Alfonso Cuaron has made a habit of giving conventional genres his own unconventional twist.
However, working from a P.D. James novel, he's never before twisted so much and to such unique effect. For example, this is a dystopian tale with the protective distance removed, with tomorrow simultaneously hinged to today and rooted in yesterday. This is an action film that spurns the usual blizzard of fast edits for single, long, gorgeously fluid takes. And this is sci-fi that looks and sounds like a documentary report, filed from a London that could be Baghdad. Or Warsaw. Or Nazareth.
Our guide is apathetic Theo, and Clive Owen plays him with Bogartian world-weariness - an erstwhile rebel who's abandoned his faith in any cause, a resigned croupier with no love left for life's crapshoot. An early scene sees him, as motley as his surroundings, quitting the rubble of the city for a trip to the country, where he heads way off-road to share some civilized talk and lots of home-grown weed with Jasper the aged hippie (Michael Caine delightfully bewigged and just plain delightful). Listen closely here, and note how the expository info flows so naturally from their conversation - hinting at the causes of the infertility crisis; flicking at the way a militaristic government has traded off liberty for homeland security; pointing out how illegal immigrants, fleeing their even more devastated countries, are "hunted down like cockroaches" and herded into ghettoes for deportation.
Cue the smart action. Back in hectic London, an armed group calling themselves the Fishes (the Christian symbols here are present and accounted for, but not overdone) is battling the state to protest its mistreatment of the immigrants. Led by Julian (Julianne Moore), the Fishes are legitimate freedom-fighters and they are unabashed terrorists, quite capable of kidnapping Theo at gunpoint, then bribing him to wangle a rare "transit pass" from his rich cousin. The ensuing scene, which unfolds within the barricaded luxury of the city's equivalent to the Green Zone, is the film's only blatant venture into sci-fi territory, and you may find it off-putting. I thought it bizarre yet fascinating, especially the sight of a looted Picasso, Guernica no less, mounted proudly on the mansion's wall - one war redeemed by art, only to become the booty of one more war.
The stolen papers permit the arrival of a young African woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), whose appearance sets the stage for Cuaron's most memorable display of virtuoso camera-work: five passengers crammed into a small car that comes under attack, the mood shifting like quicksilver from playful joviality to fearsome violence, with the entire sequence unravelling in a single extraordinarily busy but butter-smooth shot. In the melee, there's a death, and it comes as a shocking surprise.
The rest is essentially an extended chase movie, but, again, one that is often stopping to think, and always offering up peripheral little nuggets of intrigue - like the billboard ad with the proud pharmaceutical boast, "Quietus: You Decide When"; or the religious fanatics milling at a street-corner and chanting, "Infertility is God's punishment." Drugs that offer the solace of euthanasia, zealots who morally stigmatize a sexual pandemic - have I already argued that the future has an awfully contemporary ring?
It's not a spoiler to reveal the inevitable: Kee, who, after all, harkens from the cradle of homo sapiens, is toting a precious bundle. Of course, she's pregnant, carrying the hope of the world's first birth in two decades. "It's a miracle," someone says, but neither Kee nor the film is having any of that. She's just a village girl with a healthy libido and a host of willing partners, a combination that gives our latter-day Mary the perfect chance to toss off a line as funny as it is profane: "Fuck knows who the father is!"
Inevitably too (the best yarns have a knack for mixing inevitability with surprise), Theo drops the anti- from his hero to assume the role of Kee's saviour. Together, they elude the many pursuers who would use her for their various political designs, racing towards a sanctuary that may be real or could be mythic but does have a wonderfully hopeful name - it's called simply the Human Project. Their flight takes them to the walled ghetto, where the nativity scene occurs in a concrete manger among the poor and huddled masses. The infant is born into violence, into a Warsaw uprising that brings fierce fighting and then a true miracle: The baby cries and, hearing the wondrous sound of a child's voice, the combatants on both sides stop to marvel. For a few suspended seconds, all is calm, all is peace, until the moment for marvelling ends and the eternity for fighting starts up anew.
Children of Men reaches its own ambiguous end on the polluted waters of the Thames, where a boat christened Tomorrow rocks steadily in a fog that refuses to lift. It's a lovely and fitting tableau that, so typical of Cuaron's delicate mastery, leaves the preaching to others and the decision to us - sink or swim.
Opens Christmas Day