Saturday Night At The Movies

The Future Looks Bleak (So vat else is new?!)

By Dennis Hartley

The Siege of Seattle continues. New York is in flames. The “world’s youngest living person” has tragically died at 18, to the dismay of millions of “fans”. Authorities in the U.K. continue a relentless, SS-style round up of all illegal immigrants, crowding them into Gitmo-like compounds. Most significantly, scientists remain at a loss to explain why a universal plague of female infertility continues unabated into its eighteenth year. These are some of the cheery news headlines dominating the year 2027 in the not so distant, dystopian future of Alfonso Cuaron’s new film, “Children of Men.”

The story is set in (a not so) jolly old England, where we are introduced to glum-faced Theo (Clive Owen), a world-weary bloke working in some kind of vague, low-level bureaucratic job in London. He is not having a good morning. After narrowly escaping death by terrorist bombing on the way to work, he decides to beg off a day at the office, only to be kidnapped by a group of radical human rights activists (that is, as near as I can tell; the political motivations driving many of the characters are a bit fuzzy).

It turns out that the cell is led by Theo’s ex-wife (Julianne Moore), who wants him to use his connections to pull some strings and help out a “very important” colleague, (a female immigrant with a Big Secret). Initially, the reluctant Theo is determined to keep his activist roots safely embedded in the past, but fate and circumstance soon rekindle his old idealism, and he finds himself risking life and limb to help deliver the only known fertile woman in the world to the sanctuary of an organization called the Human Project .

The film ultimately spreads itself a bit too thin as a political potboiler; there are too many confusing factions of insurgents, activists and terrorists running about killing government troops and each other with equal abandon (not unlike Iraq, now that I think about it…). However, the film does become quite gripping as a straight-ahead action-thriller, especially in its final third. Cuaron effectively applies an oppressive, steel-grey visual look to his cold, cruelly bleak future vision. From a thematic standpoint, I thought that the rampant use of Christ metaphor became a bit much (I knew I was headed for trouble when, early on in the film, the Only Fertile Woman In The World “jokingly” answers “I’m a virgin” when asked who the father of her baby is).

There still are enough good reasons to recommend seeing this film, particularly for the uniformly excellent performances. The ubiquitous Michael Caine steals all of his scenes as Theo’s mentor, an aging hippie activist. An honorable mention must be given as well to the always wonderful Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe, Trainspotting), who really chews up some major scenery as an opportunistic immigration control officer.

And remember- 2008 “was” the year of the Pandemic. (Better get that flu shot next year!)

Here are some more futures that are difficult to, erm, “conceive”: 1984, THX-1138, Z.P.G. (VHS only), The Handmaid’s Tale, Logan’s Run, Zardoz, A Boy And His Dog.

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