Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
by Alfonso Cuar?n
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DVD details
Actor: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Pam Ferris, Peter MullanDirector: Alfonso Cuar?n
Brand: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAIN.
Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki
Composer: John Tavener
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; German (Original Language); Italian (Original Language); Romanian (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Too many plot devices
Summary: 3 Stars
Okay, I am the first to admit that the only thing I know about cinematography and its art is what I happen to like. That being said, I have to say that I was very much impressed with the visual side of this film. To my taste, it was a little dark, which worked quite well with the dark story line. I don't think I understood why the camera was always working as it was, but it was neat. Frankly, the first thing that drew me to the movie was its premise, and I still happily say that is the finest thing about this film--in opposition to the concern of overpopulation the film discusses what it would be like if this threat was very much gone and the end of humanity was instead looming over our heads. Then a miracle of a pregnant girl comes about and the situation of the story is how can she be protected. The story is a little extreme, but then again I bet society would crumble. The problem is that it's also contrived, with too many plot devices for my taste. I happen to prefer a character-driven tale rather than this example of situation upon situation. Still, this is a surprising poignant little film that should be appreciated by the right audience.DVD Review: A TERRIFYING DYSTOPIAN VISION NOT FAR OFF
Summary: 5 Stars
Alfonso Char?n's "Children of Men" is an adaptation of the P.D. James dystopian novel about the breakdown of all social institutions when the human race ceases the ability to procreate and faces the likelihood of its own extinction.
Chaos and civil war overtake the globe, and, in Great Britain, Orwellian fascism is the only order left as refugees are imprisoned in cages, the middle class disintegrates, terrorist acts (usually by the government) are a daily occurrence, and underground rebels fight on for revolution, trying to maintain some futile hope.
While the film's events occur in 2027, 20 years in the future, the film becomes more of a comment on the Now with its pro-war stance by the government and "Homeland Security" to protect us all. But the film transcends politics to focus on its human level, specifically on the character of Theo Farin (played to existential perfection by Clive Owen) who fatefully goes through a rite-of-passage similar to Bogie in "Casablanca" - that of a man who had pulled himself away from involvement in a war-torn world finding himself now beginning to discover a newly-reborn idealism.
Brilliantly, many references to key art works of the 20th Century fill the film. e.g., musical references from rock and classical works: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, iconic rock songs -- along with Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Penderecki and Gustav Mahler, whose first song in the "Kindertotenlieder" ("Songs for Dead Children") is quoted. Images are staged in the style of great paintings, and, most importantly, Picasso's "Guernica" becomes the major symbolic icon of the film, with the cinematography drained of bright colors to convey perfectly the film's atmosphere.
But over all, Char?n's directing is breathtaking, with his long Wellsian single-takes that truly nail the viewer directly into the world of the film. This is a masterpiece, and ultimately not one of bleakness but of hope, and one of the truly top intellectual and emotional experiences of 2006.
DVD Review: Dystopian Dysfunction
Summary: 3 Stars
Oddly, I must be one of the few folks to have seen "Children of Men" and did not form an opinion as to it being a rancid pile of rotting mule skin or the greatest movie since Silent Running. I found the basic premise to be fascinating: How would the world react twenty years into an epidemic of childlessness? Which some of the reviewers here seem to miss...this is not just how the world reacts to the onset of infertility, but almost two decades since the last baby was born. So many industries would fall into slow collapse; education, garments, much of the medical industry, etc...as the population ages past the point where new folks would replenish both consumer and professional.
Clive Owen starts off the movie in a coffee shop as the world learns of the death of its youngest citizen. He walks into a city full of violent rebellion and to where Britain is the last nation that hasn't fallen into anarchy. The government has slipped into a fascist state in order to keep from being overrun by refugees, yet Owen's ex-wife (Julianne Moore, great in a brief role) kidnaps him to set a plot into motion. They have discovered the last pregnant woman on Earth, an African named Kee. They need to smuggle her out of England to a mysterious "Human Project" group.
This is where the chaos really begins and the allegories become oppressive. Kee's baby has no discernable father (and a miracle birth is even joked about). The miracle baby has factions splitting off of factions before the little savior is even born. Oh yes, the African mother; how very Cradle of Civilization! Plus one reclusive ex-hippie idealist (Michael Caine, all crazy hair, John Lennon and homegrown weed) to emphasize just how badly the sixties failed when they were all so much better then than these fascists now.
The heavy handedness of the message is carried by some incredible cinematography, like the near ten minute single-camera shot of Owen racing through the prison camp uprising while under fire. London in decay is depressingly gritty as is the Fugee concentration camp (with shades of Abu Gharib). The sense of dread curdles under each character (like Owen's visit to his brother, the art curator), yet the tiny light of hope of the new baby still stops a war in its tracks, however briefly.
It is that final sense of redemption - the "maybe we might get our miserable species out of this mess anyway" message - that keeps the relentlessly bleak view of "Children of Men" from completely tanking. But it's the ham-fisted proletyzing that also stops it from arcing beyond its science-fiction art-house roots.
DVD Review: Liked the movie, loved the book
Summary: 3 Stars
I liked the movie, but I don't understand why the director deviated so much from the plot-line and characters in the book. I read the book after seeing the movie and I was shocked at how different they were. I liked the story-line in the book a lot more than the movie - especially the ending. DVD Review: Stunning
Summary: 5 Stars
The story is great. The camera work is very original - you feel like everything thats happening to its characters is happening to you. There are no special effects which is rare nowadays. Real explosions, real gunfire and so on... Actors did a great job. Most importantly this movie was highly believeable. No nonsense that left me going "oh come on.. give me a break" (and I'm that kind of a guy). I really felt for the characters and got attached to them. The atmosphere alone was unbelieveable -- a cold, dark, dead near-future -- kind of like the game HL 2 when you first get off the train (if you've ever played it). This movie definitely leaves you with something to remember.
Description of Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
Children of Men envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18 and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction.Runtime: 109 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre:?ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS Rating:?R UPC:?025193251329 Manufacturer No:?61032513Presenting a bleak, harrowing, and yet ultimately hopeful vision of humankind's not-too-distant future, Children of Men is a riveting cautionary tale of potential things to come. Set in the crisis-ravaged future of 2027, and based on the atypical 1993 novel by British mystery writer P.D. James, the anxiety-inducing, action-packed story is set in a dystopian England where humanity has become infertile (the last baby was born in 2009), immigration is a crime, refugees (or "fugees") are caged like animals, and the world has been torn apart by nuclear fallout, rampant terrorism, and political rebellion. In this seemingly hopeless landscape of hardscrabble survival, a jaded bureaucrat named Theo (Clive Owen) is drawn into a desperate struggle to deliver Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the world's only pregnant woman, to a secret group called the Human Project that hopes to discover a cure for global infertility. As they carefully navigate between the battling forces of military police and a pro-immigration insurgency, Theo, Kee, and their secretive allies endure a death-defying ordeal of urban warfare, and director Alfonso Cuaron (with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki) capture the action with you-are-there intensity. There's just enough humor to balance the film's darker content (much of it coming from Michael Caine, as Theo's aging hippie cohort), and although Children of Men glosses over many of the specifics about its sociopolitical worst-case scenario (which includes Julianne Moore in a brief but pivotal role), it's still an immensely satisfying, pulse-pounding vision of a future that represents a frightening extrapolation of early 21st-century history. --Jeff Shannon
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