Cinema history has been made in 2006 by a trinity of Spanish directors whose films consort to press at the boundaries of social satire with a freewheeling sense of authenticity. Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, Alejandro Gonzalez’ Babel and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth have each created highly original and stimulating films that stand as an antithesis to the government-approved sentimental message pap of directors like Paul Greengrass (United 93) or Oliver Stone (World Trade Center).
With Children of Men Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) launches a vehement social diatribe that is part thriller and part social satire based on a novel by British mystery author P.D. James. The hyper-reality he creates tears at the edges of British and American military hegemony with a defiantly cold and ironic stare that mocks those governments’ crimes against humanity and the resulting efforts to topple them.
In 2027, England is a fascist state obsessed with putting immigrants in outdoor cages and defending against terrorism after the rest of the world “collapsed.” Global infertility has whittled away at the population since 2009 when the last human child was born, and England has become a fenced-off Orwellian monstrosity filled with surveillance cameras and a constant barrage of unrestricted media brainwashing.
Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is a former radical turned disaffected bureaucrat who seizes an opportunity to take the day off work when the murder of the world’s youngest person, an 18-year-old boy, sends the public into a frenzy of mourning. Cuaron colors the harsh futuristic reality with a dry gallows humor found in Luis Bunuel’s films, and he shares Bunuel’s sense of social anarchy and disconnection.
After escaping the menacing city on a subway train shielded from rabid refugees, Theo meets his best friend Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine), a retired political cartoonist living a hidden existence with his catatonic wife in a forest where he grows several strains of mind-bending pot. Jasper’s cozy New Age-styled home with its many windows, books and rough-hewn wood environment contributes stark contrast to the film’s other locations that pulse with sterility and violence. With his long flowing white hair and equally pale beard, Michael Caine’s benevolent patriarch anchors the intelligent humanitarian theme of the story, and the venerable actor takes distinct joy in playing such an irreverent and affectionate part.
It’s not until Theo returns to London and is kidnapped by the “Fish,” a resistance group fighting for immigrant rights, that the movie starts to detonate cinematic conventions. The Fish leader, Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), is Theo’s ex-lover from his revolutionary student days, and she imposes on him to help acquire transit papers for a Fijian girl named Kee (well played by Claire-Hope Ashitey) to escape from Britain.
After obtaining joint papers that commit Theo to shepherd Kee to safety, Theo discovers that Kee is eight months pregnant and holds inside her belly a singular hope for humanity. Theo steps into a role of unarmed rescuer as he escorts Kee through a maze of chase sequences that necessarily penetrate a “Homeland Security” refugee camp patterned after Abu Ghraib.
Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designers Geoffrey Kirkland and Jim Clay create a frigid social landscape that is a logical extension of the fear obsessed society that the Bush administration has instilled in America and in the UK. Children of Men is an anecdotal vision of the way the future seems to be headed from a 2006 vantage point. There is only a tiny glimmer of hope, and it does not extend to the masses. MTW
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