| Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine. Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón US Release Date: 12.25.06 Rating: R for strong violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity. Running Time: 109 minutes Viewing Format: DVD The Plot: 20 years in the future, women are no longer able to become pregnant, throwing the human race into chaos. Theo (Owen) is called upon by his former lover Julian (Moore) to help transport a woman who has miraculously become pregnant to a group called the Human Project. But there is debate within the ranks of Julian's organization as to the best way to reveal the pregnancy to the world, as well as concerns that the Human Project may not actually exist... The Flax Rating: C+
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| The Flax Take: Maybe it's just something about films that depict dystopian futures: you throw all your energy into getting the look just right, and by the time that's done there isn't enough left to nail everything else. That's one potential reason for why Children of Men has a lot of the same problems as its spiritual predecessors, Blade Runner and Brazil. There is absolutely no doubt that director Alfonso Cuarón's vision of the year 2027, with a British police state cracking down on immigration and an aging populace resigned to humanity's grim fate, is one of the most breathtakingly compelling depictions of the future, dystopian or otherwise, ever put to film. But as jaw-dropping as the film is on many levels, it carries a mark of failure on a plot level, and that's a pretty big strike. All of the details that make the film as interesting as it is - the impending extinction of mankind, the way in which the global population is thrown into disarray, the reaction of governments to increasing immigration - are largely ancillary and dealt with in the background, while the foreground just features Clive Owen and his charge running from point A to point B for an hour and a half. Children of Men is hardly the first film to be essentially one long chase scene, but it's still mutton dressed as lamb, cloaking itself in philosophical and sociopolitical questions as a means of covering up the bare simplicity of its plot. This might be okay if those questions were answered, or if the no-pregnancy angle weren't effectively a macguffin. Children of Men is just your typical post-apocalyptic movie, though; it just posits a subtler apocalypse. The elephant in the room, the question of why the human race was mysteriously stripped of its reproductive ability, isn't even addressed. Sci-fi movies aren't necessarily required to give plausible explanations for their devices, but the near-complete avoidance of the subject here when so little is done with that aspect of the story otherwise is almost insulting. It's thrown in as a way to make us care about the chase, but it doesn't have any direct relevance to the chase. What was even the point? The atmosphere's perfect, but a dearth of character depth and a plot that cries out for deeper exploration and receives none are two huge factors in ultimately consigning Children of Men to the ranks of Brazil and Blade Runner on the list of films that are visual masterpieces but overall disappointments. Had the pass at its chosen subject not been so shallow, this could have been a classic film. Instead it's just another case of what might have been. |
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