Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
by Alfonso Cuarón
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Actor: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Pam Ferris, Peter MullanDirector: Alfonso Cuarón
Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki
Composer: John Tavener
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
Published: 2007-03-01
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Watch the Movie, Forget the Politics, Don't Watch the Extras
Summary: 4 Stars
***SPOILERS AHEAD!!!***
Cuaron's bleak dystopic vision is an excellent film, full of good acting, striking imagery, and sheer technical mastery of the film medium. The production design and numerous spectacular long takes will amaze viewers even over numerous viewings. The take on the basic plotline of the novel by P.D. James has been considerably revamped from her book, and the resulting movie though probably a better piece of cinema than a more faithful adaptation of the book would have been, will nevertheless be mainly unrecognizable to fans of the novel. The revised focus and treatment may also strike some viewers as being both overtly politicized and also perhaps overly topical, which means this film may not have the long term viability of say "Blade Runner" as a view of the future imperfect, but it is still a great ride in the short term.
James' novel speculating on the end of human fertility and the resulting societal disorder was a somber talky meditation on Christian eschatology. The Jamesian society portrayed grappled for meaning but in a way that clearly showed what you believed in determined how you would live in such a grim scenario. The movie has far less concern with Christianity as a world view and so assumes that society would rapidly fall into hellish disrepair with surviving governments rapidly becoming fascist xenophobic police states. This latter position both allows for more obvious cinematic application and also reflects a far more widespread body of secular belief as to the untrustworthiness of government and a generally bleak view of human nature. To Cuaron, humans are both sheep who need to be led and also dumb herd animals who make generally bad choices as to which brutal and manipulative shepherds will lead them.
We are barraged with police state imagery. Riot troops wait at bus stops, immigrants are herded into brutal detainment camps and treated harshly by mainly Caucasian police and soldiers, and civil liberties have been completely discarded in order to secure the shaky peace and limited prosperity of the legitimate citizens of the state. We see detainees made to wear hoods and menaced with dogs in a virtual iconographic rehash of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal of yesteryear. This is the topical element of the film, and also the aspect that may make "Children of Men" seem a bit dated 20 years from now, if (as we should hope!) such images are no longer a part of our popular media and culture. "Brazil" for instance, another police state dystopia film, has aged very well primarily because Gilliam chose to avoid over-utilization of contemporary images and instead aimed for something both timeless and surreal. Cuaron's grittier presentation has more immediate impact, but may have audiences at retro film fests in 2037 scratching their heads...
The anti-immigrant fascist state pictured here may also strike some as a typical leftist Hollywood style diatribe. It may very well be that, but we must also look more deeply at the underlying ideology of the setting. We hear only hints and pieces of the world's backstory here, but we do learn that both Manhattan and Madrid have been destroyed by terrorist nukes. We know there are various bombings occurring throughout England on a daily basis (and though some characters say the government is doing this, we the audience have no idea if that is true). We also hear about the collapse of many other nation states including the U.S.
Given this global background of chaos and despair, and the relative order and prosperity of England in this scenario, it is not exactly the height of Marxist paranoia to posit that the UK government might behave aggressively to defend what its citizens do have, even to the point of emphasizing security at the expense of liberty. Many people and governments throughout all ages have done exactly that, so Cuaron's portrayal of this society should not necessarily be read as an indictment of current social and political trends, but rather as an unsympathetic meditation as to where those trends might lead given a huge societal disturbance, i.e. the end of women bearing children. And this concept of future society is in the end based on that unsympathetic rendering of human nature that is at the heart of most secular beliefs on both the political right and the left - mainly that people respond to stimuli by doing what is convenient, profitable, and most secure for them, no matter what impact those decisions have on others or the world at large.
It should also be pointed out that the main baddies here are NOT the "fascist government" which is at some level responding to both the wishes of the public and an objectively terrible and hopeless set of circumstances. The main villains instead are the Fish, the revolutionary group that wants to overthrow the government, and that is content to murder both its own members and innocents, deceive sympathetic supporters, and put a pregnant woman and her precious child at risk in order to play politics with what may be the sole possible means of continuing the human race in order to serve their own selfish agenda. The leftist revolutionaries are the ones who murder Julian, Jasper the hippie character (who kills his wife and dog because he suspects the Fish would torture them), the refugee who tries to help lead Kee and Theo to the boat, and ultimately Theo himself. In the best Orwellian tradition then, the bad guys are not only the government, but also those who supposedly are fighting against the monsters who have themselves become monsters.
Therefore I do not find Cuaron's artistic voice to be neither tiresomely polemical nor blatantly unrealistic. We have here instead a fine speculative scenario, crafted with a naturalistic focus, and not one that strikes me as being impossible. The path to goodness and virtue here, in Cuaron's apparently Christless world, is altruism and dedication to others, and Clive Owen's character arc shows that clearly, as does Jasper and the various other characters who assist Kee and her child on their pilgrimage.
Although I may personally wish that the Christian theme of James' novel was more overtly developed in Cuaron's film, I have no objection to his alternate choice of theme and development. My one criticism is the ending, which at the same time creates a deus ex machina, raises a whole bunch of common sense issues (why are there boats in a prison camp next to the ocean and no maritime patrols off the coast?), and also shows Cuaron's leftist sympathies to be capable of overpowering the script a bit. Mainly, his willingness to showcase some mysterious international cartel of Wise Scientists as the only ones capable of doing what is right for the world.
By the end of the film, we know little about the Human Project, are not quite sure what they will do with Kee and her baby, and we have no real idea as to why Theo is willing to trust them to the extent of sacrificing everything he values in order to put Kee and her baby in their hands. Their beautiful high tech white boat with the snazzy optimistic name seems maybe a bit too much of an end of movie effort to lighten things up a tad, and as anyone who is familiar with the UN can tell you, internationalism is not necessarily the best solution to complex problems!.
Overall though this is a smart, beautiful, eloquent and touching film. Cinematography is stunning, the picture and sound of the DVD are striking, and the acting is uniformly excellent. You can watch this over and over again, and find plenty of good stuff that you missed the first few times. The DVD extras are a tad scanty, and the feature "Possibility of Hope" which features various intellectuals with unintelligible accents ramble on about the evils of globalism and pollution is a tad too preachy and actually raised new doubts in my mind about whether this really was just Seattle anarchy in cinematic form. The "experts" quoted make Noam Chomsky seem fair and balanced, and most of the "evils" of which they speak are not even directly relevant to the film. This is a witless unbalanced propaganda piece that undermines the intelligent nuances of the film. But then you don't have to watch it...
Ultimately though ignore what Cuaron and his evidently favored coterie of academic lefties have to say about the movie, and just look at the movie itself - I am sure you will enjoy it more if you don't worry so much about politics and can better appreciate how well it functions as a piece of art on many levels.
Description of Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
Set in 2027, scientists are at a loss to explain why humans can no longer procreate, but the discovery of a lone pregnant woman leads to a desperate journey to protect her and save the future of mankind.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD
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