Children of Men (2006)
Movie Review
By David Thomas
Good and Evil: Children of Men (2006)
Children of Men, a lesser known movie that was mentioned at last year’s Oscars, was one of the more global entries. Adapted (loosely) from a novel by P. D. James, and written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron of Mexico, the story is set in London. It stars British actor Clive Owen supported by his fellow Brit Michael Caine, and also supported by American actress Juliette Moore. Children of Men was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography, but it came up short of winning any Oscars. Some critics named it among their Top Ten Picks of the year.
A dark sci-fi thriller hailed as our generation’s Blade Runner, Children of Men is a dystopian picture of a bleak new world in the near term future. Set in the year 2027, the scene is dominated by the circumstance that humans have lost fertility, and there are no more children. Human extinction looms. Civic unrest dominates. Given the futility of having families, and the aging of the population, you don’t have to worry about any gratuitous sex scenes. No one seems much interested in it. Everyone’s mood is burdened with despair and hopelessness, verging on the suicidal.
Danger is everywhere, and there is no joy. Nations are isolated from each other. Britain’s tyrannical dictator has adopted a draconian policy to get rid of all illegal aliens, called refugees or “Fugees.” There are ongoing battles between insurgents and the government, which shoots on sight. Brutal shootouts crop up suddenly at unpredictable intervals. The Fugees retaliate with IEDs and Uzis. Factories, no longer responsible for clean air and water, constantly discharge smoke into the atmosphere, and drain filthy water into the gutters. Sidewalks are piled up with uncollected garbage. Graffiti covers the walls, pockmarked by gunshots and explosions. The sky is grey with soot and smog. Though shot in color, you almost remember it as a black-and-white production.
As the movie opens, the protagonist Theo (Clive Owen) enters a coffee shop where a TV bulletin is announcing that “Baby Diego,” in Argentina, the youngest human being on earth, is dead at age eighteen. The people in the coffee shop are grievously engrossed by this news. As Theo steps outside and pauses to mix a shot of whiskey into his coffee from his everpresent pocket flask, a bomb blows up the coffee shop from which he has just left. Immediately, an old van screeches up beside him. Armed masked men jump out and hustle Theo into their vehicle, kidnapping him.
You sense that living in the world of Children of Men is sort of like life in Baghdad.
Theo has been selected by an insurgent group called the Fish to carry out a mission of hope. The group settled upon Theo because their leader, Julian (Juliette Moore), had been married to him in the distant past. When their own infant child died in “the flu pandemic”, they broke up. Though she has been in hiding ever since, she still trusted him. Given Theo’s chronic depressed, alcoholic lifestyle, that says it all about 2027 Britain.
When Theo learns the nature of the mission that the Fish have in mind for him, he gains a new lease on his life. One of the young Fugee women, named Kee, had somehow become pregnant. The Fish want to smuggle her out of harm’s way. The hope for humanity’s future rests on Kee’s safety. As a hunted Fugee, her chances are nil, unless the Fish can protect her and spirit her out of the country to an island haven under the control of a shadowy entity called The Human Project.
Having cleared up the mystery of what’s going on in the plot, the movie shifts into the mode of a perilous road trip, wherein Theo serves Kee as her bodyguard and travel arranger. Without detailing all the plot twists and turns, let’s just say that their trip is fraught with as many cliffhangers as the old “serials” I used to watch at the Saturday matinees. Theo is assisted by his sidekick Jasper, an aging exhippie (Michael Caine). After many shootouts and other assorted crises, the movie ends when Theo finally manages to get Kee into a rowboat, just as the Tomorrow looms into view out of a fog bank, ready to take these very vulnerable refugees to their own new tomorrow. Alas, Theo himself can’t make it. As it turned out in the year’s Best Movie Oscar winner, The Departed, a lot of people die in Children of Men. To say more would be unfair to readers who look forward to seeing the movie. For mature viewers, I can highly recommend it.
Dystopia and Utopia. Encarta defines utopia is an ideal place or state where everyone lives in harmony and everything is for the best. Conversely, a dystopia is an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it possibly can be. Think of heaven or hell on earth. Science fiction is characterized by dystopian stories of people trying to escape or to overthrow the bad conditions. Besides Blade Runner, other examples that come to mind are The War of the Worlds; Handmaid’s Tale; Brave New World; and Fahrenheit 481. Dystopian fiction satirizes and critiques society on several levels. First and foremost is the political. Governments are uniformly dictatorial and oppressive, often centered around a personality cult of an evil leader. But they also highlight economic and class discrimination. Also, they expose the hypocrisies and pathologies of religion.
The Bible, as literature, can be approached as a repository of numerous utopian and dystopian themes. Genesis begins in Eden, but mankind descends to such a state of dissolution that God determines to destroy everyone in the Flood and re-set the human race from scratch. Exodus recounts the story of the Children of Israel’s escape from slavery. Jesus preached in parables to illustrate the Kingdom of God, a better place and state of affairs. You can argue that the quintessential dystopian story in the Bible is the Apocalypse, known to us as Revelation, with its angels, horned dragons, pestilences, spiritual warfare, and the lake of fire and brimstone, as the backdrop for an ultimate Christian hope for that new kingdom of God to come.
Children of Men is about as graphic a depiction of Revelation as a movie can be. The movie’s religious images are decidedly mixed. Organized religion, as depicted in the movie, is manifested in two separate sects of street preachers, the “Repenters” and the “Renouncers,” both of whom seem preoccupied with affixing blame on someone for the world’s sterility and lack of hope, and proclaiming the judgment of God. Both Theo and Jasper disclaim belief in divine causes. But Kee’s baby is the literal embodiment of the hope of the future of humanity. And Theo, well, his name means God in Greek. Theo’s character in Children of Men is an example of the literary type called the “Christ Image,” or the willing servant who sacrifices his own life for the good of all.
I cannot recommend the movie as a good selection for a church movie discussion group. The language is profane, and the pervasive violence is very graphic. Personally, I found the movie to be shocking and sometimes offensive. But that was my first viewing. (I had the same kind of responses the first time I read the book of Revelation.) The meaning of Children of Men lingered in my mind afterwards, to the extent that I wanted to go back to see it again. Just as with my experience with Do the Right Thing and other disturbing movies, I found the second viewing much more rewarding.
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