Children of Men (2006)
I caught Alfonso Cuaron's latest, Children of Men, on Cinemax a few days ago. The film is set about 20 years in the future when the world has totally gone to shit. Everything is polluted, abandoned, or in the process of being shot and blown up by warring groups. Also, everyone is waiting for the clock to run out because a new person hasn't been born for eighteen years. However, this situation hasn't caused a new reverence for life (of course), instead the opposite has occurred.
In the midst of this bleakness, a forty-something man named Theo Faron (Clive Owen) lives in London, one of the world's last functioning cities, working as a bureaucrat and living an almost erased existence. His one connection is his friend Jasper (Michael Caine) an aging hippie who grows pot out in the country. Theo is forced back into the world when his ex-love Julian (Julianne Moore) asks him to get a travel pass for an African refugee named Kee. Her planned safe passage is quickly screwed-up, though, and Theo soon learns that Kee is pregnant with what will be the first baby in nearly two decades.
The film can really be divided into two parts, Theo before he learns of Kee's pregnancy and Theo after. He changes irrevocably with this news and part of the charm of Children of Men lies in watching Theo wake up and rejoin the living.
Once he knows what's at stake, Theo decides to help Kee, to become in essence, her protector. Things get progressively worse for them as they try to escape from England to go to the possibly fictional "Human Project," a secret science collective where they believe Kee will be safe. They go deeper and deeper into the realm of the dispossessed and by the time they reach the end of their journey, they have passed through what can only be described as hell, a refugee camp named Bexhill. In Bexhill an uprising is occurring and they hide and try to stay one step ahead of the violence which abounds all around them.
And Cuaron has depicted the violence here in the most realistic and frighteningly random way that I have ever seen in a movie. Theo and Kee are not super heroes and they never pick up guns, they only try to avoid them. There is one long shot (over six minutes), when Theo has lost Kee and is trying to get to her, that the camera never leaves his side. We watch him run from bullets and bombs, we watch as he sees people dying everywhere. The violence is constant, horrifying, and indiscriminate. Theo never quits, though. The man who had washed his hands of the world, now sees the absolute worst of it, but still hopes for the future this baby can bring.
I wish our President would watch this, because it really puts you in a place where every thing can end from one stray bullet, from one idiot's mistake, or from a random bomb some unknown pilot dropped from a plane. Every life should mean something, every life is a future, but in this world (and it's our world, too, of course) life is cheaper than dirt. It takes almost certain extinction to make one newborn's life precious - and even then it doesn't do much for the other adults running around. Ultimately, this is a movie about the value of life. Many of us in the U.S. are like Theo, we despair from afar and lead lives of vacant removal. In the beginning of Children of Men Theo says "it's too late" that the world is over. When Theo is actually confronted with the worst of the world's reality, though, he regains hope. Things are bad in 2007 and they'll probably get worse, but do we give up or do we protect the future?
In the midst of this bleakness, a forty-something man named Theo Faron (Clive Owen) lives in London, one of the world's last functioning cities, working as a bureaucrat and living an almost erased existence. His one connection is his friend Jasper (Michael Caine) an aging hippie who grows pot out in the country. Theo is forced back into the world when his ex-love Julian (Julianne Moore) asks him to get a travel pass for an African refugee named Kee. Her planned safe passage is quickly screwed-up, though, and Theo soon learns that Kee is pregnant with what will be the first baby in nearly two decades.
The film can really be divided into two parts, Theo before he learns of Kee's pregnancy and Theo after. He changes irrevocably with this news and part of the charm of Children of Men lies in watching Theo wake up and rejoin the living.
Once he knows what's at stake, Theo decides to help Kee, to become in essence, her protector. Things get progressively worse for them as they try to escape from England to go to the possibly fictional "Human Project," a secret science collective where they believe Kee will be safe. They go deeper and deeper into the realm of the dispossessed and by the time they reach the end of their journey, they have passed through what can only be described as hell, a refugee camp named Bexhill. In Bexhill an uprising is occurring and they hide and try to stay one step ahead of the violence which abounds all around them.
And Cuaron has depicted the violence here in the most realistic and frighteningly random way that I have ever seen in a movie. Theo and Kee are not super heroes and they never pick up guns, they only try to avoid them. There is one long shot (over six minutes), when Theo has lost Kee and is trying to get to her, that the camera never leaves his side. We watch him run from bullets and bombs, we watch as he sees people dying everywhere. The violence is constant, horrifying, and indiscriminate. Theo never quits, though. The man who had washed his hands of the world, now sees the absolute worst of it, but still hopes for the future this baby can bring.
I wish our President would watch this, because it really puts you in a place where every thing can end from one stray bullet, from one idiot's mistake, or from a random bomb some unknown pilot dropped from a plane. Every life should mean something, every life is a future, but in this world (and it's our world, too, of course) life is cheaper than dirt. It takes almost certain extinction to make one newborn's life precious - and even then it doesn't do much for the other adults running around. Ultimately, this is a movie about the value of life. Many of us in the U.S. are like Theo, we despair from afar and lead lives of vacant removal. In the beginning of Children of Men Theo says "it's too late" that the world is over. When Theo is actually confronted with the worst of the world's reality, though, he regains hope. Things are bad in 2007 and they'll probably get worse, but do we give up or do we protect the future?