Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Writers: Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, P.D. James
Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Music: John Tavener
Editors: Alfonso Cuaron, Alex Rodriguez
Cast: Clive Owen, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter Mullan, Pam Ferris, P.D. James
The most surprising thing for me about this movie is that P.D. James wrote the source novel, The Children of Men, published in 1992. I know James as more of a detective fiction writer on the cozy side of things, and this dystopian future nightmare is anything but cozy. It has a terrific premise—set in 2027, after a sudden and mysterious onset of human infertility has led to no live births in nearly 20 years. James and five screenplay writers, including director Alfonso Cuaron, imagine what the future would look like in the circumstances. Set in London and the UK, it’s a pretty grim scene—bombings, terrorism, random violence, a world tearing itself apart from the inside.
Actually, it doesn’t look that different from now, or even 2006 (think Baghdad and other Iraqi cities). The sad fact is that not much is really done with the premise specifically. The first time I saw this picture I was kind of meh about the whole thing, but more recently I realized it’s better to take what’s given at face value and enjoy it as a fast-paced, gritty thriller with some notably impressive set pieces. In general it is also bold and brave about killing off characters early if it is so inclined, including characters we like and admire. But the main thing is the pell-mell pace and the ordnance going off on the regular.
The most surprising thing for me about this movie is that P.D. James wrote the source novel, The Children of Men, published in 1992. I know James as more of a detective fiction writer on the cozy side of things, and this dystopian future nightmare is anything but cozy. It has a terrific premise—set in 2027, after a sudden and mysterious onset of human infertility has led to no live births in nearly 20 years. James and five screenplay writers, including director Alfonso Cuaron, imagine what the future would look like in the circumstances. Set in London and the UK, it’s a pretty grim scene—bombings, terrorism, random violence, a world tearing itself apart from the inside.
Actually, it doesn’t look that different from now, or even 2006 (think Baghdad and other Iraqi cities). The sad fact is that not much is really done with the premise specifically. The first time I saw this picture I was kind of meh about the whole thing, but more recently I realized it’s better to take what’s given at face value and enjoy it as a fast-paced, gritty thriller with some notably impressive set pieces. In general it is also bold and brave about killing off characters early if it is so inclined, including characters we like and admire. But the main thing is the pell-mell pace and the ordnance going off on the regular.
It's certainly a bleak vision of a fascist future. You might even be tempted to call it prescient, with its focus on immigrants as a political flashpoint, although let’s remember that such vilifications of immigrants were coin of the international conservative realm in 2006 and even a live-wire issue in 1992 when the novel was published. Blaming all problems on immigrants has been going on for centuries. But Children of Men still often feels startlingly on-point in 2022. The scenes of abuse and the way it’s reported in the media—it’s yet another dystopia movie with droning newscasts providing a good deal of the exposition—are sadly more familiar than fantastical.
I’m tempted to say this infertility crisis is meant to stand in metaphorically for the ongoing climate change crisis, but it’s a pretty strange choice of metaphor, raising a lot of sidelong gender-related and feminist issues. And I’m not entirely convinced by all they have dreamed up either, though I say again it’s certainly thrilling enough as it goes. In a way, this mass infertility would make a good writing prompt and I’d like to see some other ideas of how things would develop and transpire in such a world. Beyond public fatalism, which should never be underestimated, it’s hard for me to connect infertility with terrorism and hatred of immigrants and such. It works as a metaphor for climate change because both have a grinding quality, with minuscule changes in the here and now but a slowly overwhelming and profound sense that things have gone deeply wrong. It’s common to hear people these days talk about feeling they have somehow gone off into the “wrong timestream.”
The premise of Children of Men is also good in a kind of “weird” vein, as it starts with something we all just take for granted—sex leads to babies and babies become people and there are always lots of people in the world. In this world, they have even identified the youngest humans and forced celebrity on them, with the usual results. But it’s hard not to be distracted trying to understand how infertility leads to demonization of immigrants and more terrorism and fascism.
Instead, Cuaron’s liquid style of filmmaking is deployed and the story just goes bam-bam-bam and the popcorn is salty and good. There’s a great scene early of an elaborate and shocking ambush. Much of the second half of the movie is a spectacular battle set in a concentration camp / ghetto section of London, which comes off something like John Woo’s Hard Boiled, where scenes of intense battle take place in a hospital.
In the midst of all this, a miracle—a baby is born to an immigrant woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey). Why this happens after such a long time of it not happening is never really explained. An underground group of activists want to use the birth for their own (unclear) reasons. It is suggested that the government wants to seize the child for PR purposes. You would assume it would also have a scientific interest in the child and mother, but no one discusses it as a motive. Instead, the picture becomes a giant game of Get That Baby.
It makes little sense but the movie never really gives you time to think, diverting with spectacular fights and escapes and subterfuge, etc., etc. It’s reasonably entertaining and reminds us again that Cuaron has to count among the best directors going now (Y tu mama tambien, Roma, and I’m also quite fond of Gravity for the filmmaking). But given this premise and all the other elements of this story it still feels like a missed opportunity. It wants to be Blade Runner but it is merely The Bourne Identity.
I’m tempted to say this infertility crisis is meant to stand in metaphorically for the ongoing climate change crisis, but it’s a pretty strange choice of metaphor, raising a lot of sidelong gender-related and feminist issues. And I’m not entirely convinced by all they have dreamed up either, though I say again it’s certainly thrilling enough as it goes. In a way, this mass infertility would make a good writing prompt and I’d like to see some other ideas of how things would develop and transpire in such a world. Beyond public fatalism, which should never be underestimated, it’s hard for me to connect infertility with terrorism and hatred of immigrants and such. It works as a metaphor for climate change because both have a grinding quality, with minuscule changes in the here and now but a slowly overwhelming and profound sense that things have gone deeply wrong. It’s common to hear people these days talk about feeling they have somehow gone off into the “wrong timestream.”
The premise of Children of Men is also good in a kind of “weird” vein, as it starts with something we all just take for granted—sex leads to babies and babies become people and there are always lots of people in the world. In this world, they have even identified the youngest humans and forced celebrity on them, with the usual results. But it’s hard not to be distracted trying to understand how infertility leads to demonization of immigrants and more terrorism and fascism.
Instead, Cuaron’s liquid style of filmmaking is deployed and the story just goes bam-bam-bam and the popcorn is salty and good. There’s a great scene early of an elaborate and shocking ambush. Much of the second half of the movie is a spectacular battle set in a concentration camp / ghetto section of London, which comes off something like John Woo’s Hard Boiled, where scenes of intense battle take place in a hospital.
In the midst of all this, a miracle—a baby is born to an immigrant woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey). Why this happens after such a long time of it not happening is never really explained. An underground group of activists want to use the birth for their own (unclear) reasons. It is suggested that the government wants to seize the child for PR purposes. You would assume it would also have a scientific interest in the child and mother, but no one discusses it as a motive. Instead, the picture becomes a giant game of Get That Baby.
It makes little sense but the movie never really gives you time to think, diverting with spectacular fights and escapes and subterfuge, etc., etc. It’s reasonably entertaining and reminds us again that Cuaron has to count among the best directors going now (Y tu mama tambien, Roma, and I’m also quite fond of Gravity for the filmmaking). But given this premise and all the other elements of this story it still feels like a missed opportunity. It wants to be Blade Runner but it is merely The Bourne Identity.
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