Children of Men

I really felt overwhelmed by Children of Men, I really did, and I was amazed on reflection to realize it's really down to one technical factor that raises a good dystopian thriller into something transcendent. Much of the film is shot in incredibly long, fluid takes following Theo Faron (Clive Owen), often as he moves through a variety of locations. Because Theo's world is so large and fluid and I was never shown the seams, it felt incredibly real. At several points Theo passes by or eavesdrops on the rest of the cast as he walks into earshot of conversations, so there is a definite sense that the world around him continues without him, like the of the reverse Truman Show(1). The cumulative effect is to make Theo and his world, and everyone in it, seem so real that I was completely absorbed into the story, to the point of feeling the crawling grief of Theo's world, and feel the warm spark when he glimpses something brighter. The exploding coffeeshop clip from the opening used to promote the film packs this surprising punch because the long, intimate shot of Theo captures so well his feeling of “I was just there.”

The themes of the film when presented in that manner take on a greater significance, and they take on a range of issues, from the obvious authoritarianism and xenophobia, to a more general malaise of despair in a culture that sees no future for itself, to the fleeting nature of the transcendent, unifying moments we experience as a culture. The general premise of the film is that no children have been born in the world in 18 years, without any explanation, and the looming extinction of the human race has created a climate of overwhelming depression. When the first pregnancy is introduced into this world in almost two decades, the effect is briefly overwhelming on those around the mother, before politics set in and protecting her becomes secondary to exploiting her. In particular there's an image in this film of soldiers kneeling penitently before the child before resuming fighting in an Iraq-like wrecked urban landscape, which evoked the fleeting effects of both Christ and 9/11 of turning our focus to something higher than our usual squabbles ourselves, before both were exploited.

I can be biased by the fact that I love a few of the actors in this film, and Clive Owen and Julianne Moore both do well, as does Chiwetel Ejiofor in a supporting role that needed the depth of feeling he brings to it. Michael Caine, however, who is having a very good year, steals a lot of his scenes playing an John Lennon-inspired aged hippie. So my response may have been exceptional, but the only other film I've seen this year that moved me as much as Children of Men was The Depahted.

1 - Technically that would be the real world, but I suppose I was referring to the way that The Truman Show was about constructing an obviously fake, idealized world that let people escape their own lives and carefully protected its audience through panning away from Truman's sex life, letting imagination substitute where our romantic ideals get... sticky. Truman being a real person makes him an anchor to ease the suspension of disbelief even though the parameters of Truman's world are laid out as fake, and Children of Men does the opposite. Alfonso Cuaron makes the world around his actors seem real, and ties it into our own through careful references to media imagery from Abu Ghraib, The Green Zone, and Guantanamo, to give a few, and to some of our most profound real and fictional nightmares through references to Orwell, Auschwitz, and others. So Cuaron has Clive Owen's stomping around in the world I brought into the theater but lured me in with a premise that keeps the story at a safe distance (global infertility, decades into the future).