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Review by Kelly Parks |
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USA Release: Jan. 5, 2007 Universal Pictures Rating: USA: PG |
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I don't know the right word. I mean, is it still called genocide if people do it to themselves? By the way, I'm not talking about the movie.
The movie being CHILDREN OF MEN, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN) and written by Mr. Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and based on the book by P.D. James.
The story begins in London in the year 2027. Theo (Clive Owen: PRIVATEER 2: THE DARKENING, SIN CITY) is getting his morning coffee. The coffee shop TV broadcasts a news bulletin that the world's youngest person has been knifed to death by a crazed fan. We quickly learn that about 18 years ago, for some unknown reason, every woman on Earth became infertile. No children have been born since then and humanity is heading for extinction.
TRIVIA In PD James original 1992 novel, it was the men, and not the women, who were infertile. I guess that made co-writer and director Alfonso Cuarón (and his group of all-male writers) itchy, since changing the onus from the men to the women in no way changes the story. In the translation from book to movie, changes are often made to reflect the film maker's personal politics or hang-ups, not to simply improve or shorten the film. Does that one minor change shine a bright spotlight on the film maker's secret fear? The robot dolls seen in this movie and the (inferior) mirror image film, Z.P.G. (1972) are a reality in Japan. There they are known as the Primopuel doll (1990s) and currently as the Yumel Doll or "Healing partner", and the Snuggling Ifbot (2005). The robot dolls have a vocabulary of over 1,200 words. Such dolls are made for old people, most of whom would have been grandparents had they bothered to make families. The dolls are able to ask questions, like "Why do elephants have long noses?" so faux grandparents can pretend to impart their faux wisdom. Because the population growth of Japan is 0.05, the number of old people has surpassed the ever dwindling number of young people. The robot dolls are increasing in sales and market as the Japanese slowly die off. LINKS - The Age Khallej Times Bloomberg |
Theo leaves and pauses to add some courage to his coffee when a bomb destroys the coffee shop. This is a violent time, with much of the world already collapsed into chaos. Knowing that the world is ending makes many people eagerly suicidal.
England is one of the last bastions of civilization and refugees from everywhere try to get here. This has turned the country into a police state and illegal aliens are rounded up and shipped out as fast as the police can find them. Pro-refugee groups work to change this situation, often through terrorism.
Theo isn't part of any of that. He's a sad man, still grieving over the death of his son twenty years ago. He spends his free time getting stoned with his best friend Jasper (Michael Caine: BATMAN BEGINS, THE PRESTIGE). But one day he gets approached (and by approached I mean kidnapped) by a pro-refugee group that turns out to be headed by his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore: CAST A DEADLY SPELL, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, EVOLUTION, HANNIBAL, THE FORGOTTEN). They need some travel papers to help get someone out of the country and Theo has a connection.
The person in question (as Theo eventually discovers) is Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a young refugee girl who, much to Theo's stunned surprise, is pregnant. The first pregnant woman in decades and perhaps the only one on Earth. Julian wants to get her to a semi-mythical group called The Human Project, but others have darker designs for her.
And that's all I'm going to say about that. What I will say is that this is a very good movie. There's a visual style here that I've never seen before. The director is a master of the most basic movie principle: show, don't tell. The way the violence, especially, is shown feels grittily real often because it is simple and quick or shown from a distance and subdued. The sense of a tiny bit of hope awash in a sea of hopelessness, about to sink out of sight at any moment, is amazingly well done.
But what about the science? It's definitely time for an in depth
!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
I'm not going to discuss the worldwide infertility very much, only because it's never explained so I have no science to criticize. I will mention that I think if this actually happened that a variety of biological techniques (cloning, for example) could be used to prevent our extinction, but that's a minor quibble.
Read THE SCIENCE MOMENT/Children of Men for the full science.
My point being that CHILDREN OF MEN is more than just a good sci-fi action movie. Most people see it as humanity getting its comeuppance for damaging the environment. But I see it as a dramatization of the cultural suicide taking place right before our eyes.
I give it four shriek girls.
This review
copyright 2007 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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