Movie Review/Reaction: Children of Men

Just saw Children of Men last night; I'm not going to spend a lot of time going over the plot or better-known details of the film; I just had a few reactions that I wanted to blog about. Here's the Wikipedia summary, for those of you who prefer not to look at long reviews before seeing a movie, or those who can't be bothered to check the IMDB entry:

The film is set in a dystopian 2027, in which two decades of global infertility have left the entire human race with less than a century before extinction. The resulting widespread societal collapse has led to terrorism, environmental destruction, and the creation of millions of refugees. In Britain, where the film is set, the government is creating a new social order based on the persecution of illegal immigrants. Humanity's best hope seemingly lies with the secretive Human Project, a group working to save the human species. When a pregnant West African refugee named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) surfaces, civil servant Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is convinced to transport her, mankind's newly found future, to an awaiting rendezvous with the Human Project, while keeping her safe from Britain's oppressive crackdown on immigrants.

The creation of this 20-years-ahead dystopia is what had me enthralled for much of the film (Not to dismiss the characters, plot, or cinematography, of course. Or Julianne Moore. Rawr).

The first half of the film is filled with scenes establishing this future world. For instance, BBC news broadcasts ("the siege of Seattle has entered its 1000th day"), the commuter trains with metal grating over the windows, to protect against indigents throwing stones. The presence of black-clad armored police on every street corner, with their casual brutality--a police dog lunges at the protagonist as he is walking by refugee detention cages in the city, and the dog handler yells, "Just keep moving! Stop looking!"

The British government has turned a seaside town into an illegal immigrant (refugee) camp/internment center; there are scene of Islamic youths walking through the streets, chanting Allahu akbar while firing their AK-47s into the air. As Manohla Dargis' New York Times review put it, It imagines the unthinkable: What if instead of containing Iraq, the world has become Iraq, a universal battleground of military control, security zones, refugee camps and warring tribal identities?.

The hyperrealistic urban warfare scenes at the end of the film cemented that idea in my mind--bloody, house to house, room-by-room fighting, with many civilian casualties, because, well, they're in the crossfire. It seems like the evolution of what might come in the future--Mogadishu, Grozny, Fallujah...

Also, this is the first time I've ever heard King Crimson used in a movie soundtrack. Although it seems odd to use late 60's prog rock in a film set in a future distopia, something about In the Court of the Crimson King matched the mood of tired decay. The scene was set in Britain's "repository for rescued arts,"--Picasso's Guernica and Michelangelo's David are squirreled away in this ultramodern gallery that nobody is allowed to visit, to be saved for... perhaps nobody.

The soundtrack also features a piece commissioned from John Tavener ("Fragments of a Prayer").

Anyway, if you can see it, it's a strong recommendation. For Boston locals, I saw it at the Arlington Capitol; it appears the DVD has been released, and is available on NetFlix.

[Final side note: other recent film views at the Capitol were Pan's Labyrinth and Letters from Iwo Jima--both strong recommendations, although they didn't inspire this type of blog post.]