Review of the Movie Children of Men

This is a dark dystopian tale. It starts in London in the near future, a grimy decaying London with garbage piled in the streets and graffiti splattered on the walls. The attention paid to visual detail in the film is amazing, and the cityscape, both alien and familiar at the same time, is completely believable.

The first adrenalin-producing shock happens only a few minutes into the film. I won't tell you what happened, so as not to ruin your own surprise, but I wanted to give you an idea of the level of tension in this film and how quickly it starts. There are more shocks along the way, and throughout, the film maintains a tautness, though it never rises to an unbearable level.

When the film opens, the news is being broadcast that the youngest person in the world has just died. He was eighteen years old.

No one knows why all the women in the whole world had become infertile, why no children had been born in the last eighteen years. It's just something that happened.

Meanwhile, government propaganda is everywhere, in the streets, even in the buses, urging people to be tested for fertility, and, especially, to turn in illegal immigrants. Anti-immigrant hatred has reached a feverish pitch, and all around the city immigrants are being captured and thrown into cages, to be later deported or sent to refugee centers.

All of this is shown in the first few minutes of the film. I don't want to give away any more plot points, because this is a film best seen knowing as little as possible about what is going to happen.

The film is based on a novel by P.D. James, an atypical book for her since she usually writes mysteries. The film is directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and stars Clive Owen, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, and Pam Ferris, all of whom give compelling performances.

As I mentioned earlier, the film is visually very rich. The soundtrack is also exceptional, with music ranging from the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday" to classical music by Gustav Mahler.

There is a lot of violence in this film, lots of noise and explosions and gun battles and blood. I usually don't like violence in films, and I usually avoid "action" films altogether, but it's to the credit of this film that I was drawn in rather than repelled. The violence never seems gratuitous, never tacked on just for a quick thrill. It is an essential part of the world of the future that is depicted in the film, a sign of how much things have deteriorated from now until then.

And yet, as strange and as horrible as the world in the film appears, it is never so strange that you couldn't draw a line between now and then. In this, I think the film serves as a cautionary tale. The fascism of the government, the cruelty towards immigrants, the fighting in the cities differs only in degree, not in kind, from things that are going on now. This point is underlined when we see, at the entrance to a nightmarish refugee camp, a sign saying "Homeland Security."

As grim as the film is, there are also moments of comic relief, as well as characters who display loyalty and affection and who perform acts of great heroism in nearly impossible circumstances. And there is, in the end, hope.

Highly recommended.