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Children of men is a 2006 film directed by Mexican Alfonso Cuarón based on the novel of the same name by PD James.
This dystopia developed in 2027 deals with several topics, but mainly fertility. And it is that 18 years have passed since the last baby was born, but it is in the death of this young adult that the story begins.
In a world full of war, despair, and immigration punished in the style of World War II, the death of this last baby born hurts, except for the protagonist of the story: Theo. A former activist, now an office worker, decides to take advantage of this tragedy to take a break, but that is when he is captured by the «terrorist» members called Fish, led by his ex-wife, Julian.
Death and life are the main themes in this film: the death of the last baby, as well as the explosion of bombs in a cafe drive us from the beginning towards what kind of movie we are going to experience.
Once Theo is kidnapped and released, he looks for his cousin Nigel, because he needs a passport to transport a person: Kee, a woman of African descent who turns out to be pregnant and is the salvation of this terrible situation. Once on the way to their destination, a surprise arrives for the protagonists: a band of rebels confronts them, thus suddenly killing Julian. Police arrive after the rebels flee, now they face the protagonists while the terrorist leader dies at the hands of her ex-husband; the driver, Luke, manages to reassure them only to later kill them and flee with everyone else.
This first act begins with great force and ends in the same way, and so with every act in the film.
In the second act they have arrived home, but things get bad again, Theo discovers that those who killed Julian, have been the same Fish, therefore he decides to take Kee with him, along with Miriam, the midwife, towards a small house in the middle of the forest owned by an old friend of Theo’s, Jasper, a former political cartoonist turned drug dealer. Thus we enter a small, but at the same time, pleasant period of tranquility within the film, before everything goes wrong again, yielding more death and tragedy.
Cuarón in this film shows us a world that, in reality, is not very far from the current reality: he shows us nations plunged into chaos with no hope (except England, which, for some unknown reason, is the most stable), institutional violence , xenophobia and, thus, zero dignity to people from foreign countries who are imprisoned, mistreated and even killed as if they were nothing.
The movie doesn’t explain many things such as why women are infertile, or why the world has fallen into more disgrace, but that actually adds to the story by making us as viewers work the reasons prior to the filmic context.
As a small observation, this movie doesn’t seem all that futuristic. Few small objects seem to be out of this time: small holographic billboards scattered throughout the city and a few other remote control objects that are located in Jasper’s house.
In more technical terms, we find the always brilliant photography of Emmanuel “El Chivo” Lubezki, who from this point on would be recurrent in the films of Cuarón and Iñarritu. Very well planned and executed frames, as well as sequence shots in a couple of scenes, classics from this Mexican cinematographer, who also used a 35mm film format instead of video.
The color palette of the film is one of cold and dark colors, except for those small visual flashes of peace in which they are warmer and greener, most of the film is shown between ashes, dark rooms, cloudy skies by the pollution and destroyed facades.
In the acting department we find Clive Owen as the leading role of Theo who delivers an excellent performance full of confusion, fear and hopelessness, and in counterpart, with great initiative and motivation, the actress Julianne Moore who shares her name with that of the character she plays . Also with Michael Caine, who plays as the best friend and drug dealer Jasper. In addition, the then not so well known Chiwetel Ejiofor (mainly known for the movie 12 years a Slave and Doctor Strange) and in an even smaller role Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy and Pacific Rim).
The film received Academy Award nominations in 2007 for: Best Adapted Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby; as well as Best Cinematography for Chivo Lubezki and Best Editing for Alfonso Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez.
Children of Men, presents us a interesting story, which at certain moments ceases to be a science fiction film and demonstrates the reality in which we find ourselves but usually ignore.
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