European Films

An ugly mix of contemporary issues is hacked to unrecognizable bits in Alfonso Cuaron’s futuristic thriller-blender Children of Men. The film is a tame, at times insipid thriller trying to impress with impossibly generic analogies to our own time. Issues such as immigration, racism, terrorism, state control and religious fanaticism all find a place on Children’s crowded streets, but they have been changed, combined or placed out of context to such an extent that they become little more than textural decoration, with nothing of the deeply shocking truisms that make works like George Orwell’s 1984 still powerful today. Michael Caine hams it up in a supporting performance that is sure to become classic camp, but generally the shifts in tone from low-key comedy to guerilla-style  drama are so jagged they are distracting.

Children of Men is based on a P.D. James novel that Cuaron adapted together with screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton. What emerges from the film is that in 2027, the world is in chaos and only Great-Britain is relatively safe. A constant influx of immigrants is being reversed and all are deported to abandoned towns where they live by themselves, surrounded by police and the military. For unknown reasons, women have been unable to conceive since 2009. There is little or no hope left, and office worker Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is depressed when he hears that the youngest human being has been killed at age 18 when he refused to sign an autograph.  

Before he knows it, Theo (note the not-too-subtle name) is kidnapped by a terrorist faction called The Fishes, who fight for equal rights for immigrants, and is forced by a member of them (Julianne Moore) to obtain papers for a refugee who needs to be taken to the coast. It turns out that the refugee (Claire Hope-Ashitey, from Shooting Dogs) is actually pregnant! (Cue triumphal symphonic music and shots of amazed faces.) Theo will try to get her to Brighton safe, but as these things go, the way is paved with danger and friends turn out to be enemies and vice-versa.  

Cuaron’s London and Baxhill, a refugee shanty town, are dirty and dangerous places where violence lurks everywhere and terrorist bombings are less talked about than the melodramatic death of the youngest person on the planet. As is often the case in science fiction, the future is a mix of elements from the present, though the problem is that there seems to be no explanation as to why and how these elements have ended up together in the two decades that separate the audience from 2027. Christianity has been restyled with elements from Asian  religions, Michelangelo’s David (minus one leg) stands inside a building in London rather than in Florence, immigrants are transported in cages and fertility tests and British passport checks are obligatory at practically every corner of the street. Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalists are gathering in the immigrant shantytowns, preparing a revolution. 

What happened in the intervening years? Without this knowledge these events make little or no sense. Cuaron has succeeded in creating a future in chaos, but for it to comment on any contemporary issues it needs to be clear what created this chaos and why this chaos has been organized in the way it is. As presented in Children of Men, the future of mankind has no past.

Michael Caine has a lot of fun with his role as a neo-hippie who helps Owen's character, though generally the film’s attempts at low-key comedy are bogged down by its need to be taken seriously as an action movie. When Theo tries to escape in a car that needs to be pushed to get going, it interrupts and distracts from a chase sequence with something more at home in a Buster Keaton film. What remains are an impressive sequence involving an assault on a car by two sharpshooters on a scooter and a shoot-out involving the army and brigands that plays like a deleted scene from Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down; barely enough elements to carry an action film, much less a political science fiction picture. The devil is in the details, they say, only here there is clearly a lot of the devil at work but a chronic lack of detail to make any sense of it.