Children of Men

Posted by Clayton L. White (stinky_booties@hotmail.com) on March 27, 2007

There are filmmakers that will be remembered forever. Bergman, Hitchcock, Welles, Scorsese, Fassbinder, Kurosawa, Altman, the list goes on. Now you can add Alfonso Cuaron to the list. His new film Children of Men, is a masterpiece, hands down. It was easily the best film of 2006, it is the best film of the decade, and it will stand as one of the greatest motion picture experiences ever made. After seeing it in a theater, I was stunned. There hasn’t been a film released in my lifetime that had affected as much. I was afraid that my praise came too soon, I was excited, I was happy to finally see a modern movie that was truly great. I knew I had to wait until the DVD came out to properly judge the film. I received the DVD yesterday, and I am happy to see that my first instinct was right.

There is so much that can be said about this film. The socio-political undertones are so deep that I wouldn’t even be able to crack the surface in this review, so I won’t. Out of respect for those who haven’t seen it, I don’t want to reveal too much, the less known about this film, the better. The story is fairly simple; London, 2027, women are infertile and the world has essentially gone to hell. An apathetic drunkard named Theo Faron (Clive Owen) works a dead end job at the Ministry of Energy, one day he is kidnapped by a terrorist group known as the Fishes. They are lead by Theo’s ex-wife Julian, played by Julianne Moore, and they want Theo to acquire travel permits to smuggle a refugee woman named Kee across the border. Theo reluctantly goes along with this only to find later that Kee is pregnant, which forces him to be a hero and risk his life for what is basically the worlds only hope. And that’s all I’m going to say about the story. I will not ruin this movie for anyone. All you need to know is that the acting, from Owen, to Michael Caine as an aging hippie, to the great Danny Huston as Theo’s cousin, is flawless straight down the line. These actors are all at the top of their game.

Adding to this is Cuaron’s fantastic direction. He has been putting out solid work for a decade now, especially with Y tu mama tambien, and Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, but here he hits his zenith. Together with the great cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World), Cuaron gives us very long handheld takes that put us directly into the war zone. The camera work is simply astonishing, and it rivals any I’ve ever seen. Cuaron also has an uncanny sense of pacing. He knows how to build suspense the exact point where we are on the edge of our seats, then he throws a bit of humor to knock us off balance, only to bring us back with more horrifying images. The direction in this film is breathtaking, flawless, and beautiful, and it can easily stand alongside the best of Hitchcock’s work. Sure, it’s high praise, but the film warrants it. There is one scene in particular that takes place in a moving car that literally sent shivers down my spine. It last for about five minutes, all one take, all one camera, and very frightening. This scene itself is enough to recommend the movie, and I can’t say enough about it, except that it may be the single most effective scene of any movie in the last thirty years.

Pay attention to the details in the film. Cuaron gives us exposition in the background. Every newspaper, photograph, television set, and bit of graffiti is important. Basically, Cuaron uses every bit of the frame to tell his story. In fields we see burning horses. In a house we see cats with their kittens. In a brilliant sequence inside the Battersea Power Station, we see Michelangelo’s David missing a lower leg, Picasso’s Guernica hangs on the wall of the dining room, and a giant inflatable pig hangs outside to reflect the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals. The production design and art direction in this film is simply amazing.

The DVD comes out March 27, and it has some really great bonus features. Sadly, Cuaron is not a fan of commentaries, no matter, it’s better to leave us with a little mystery. Rent it, buy it, get a hold of it somehow. Every couple of decades a movie like this comes along, and when it does you do not want to miss it. After all the crap that Hollywood seems determined to shove into our faces, here is a film that reminds us why films are made. The film is rated R for strong violence, language, brief drug use, and brief nudity, but I would recommend it to anyone mature enough to get what’s going on. I feel that I haven’t done this film justice in this review, but a film this great speaks for itself. I have one last piece of praise before I end this review; Children of Men is the only film that I have ever seen that has left me completely content. Each time I have watched it, I have felt that I will never need to watch another film again. The film has been labeled as a sci-fi thriller, or a futuristic action movie. Labels are insignificant here, this film is cinematic art of the highest order.

Read more articles by Clayton L. White