Children of Men
   BCast :
Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam

Director:
Alfonso Cuaron

Rating:
R for strong violence, language, drug use, nudity

Running time:
114 minutes
   Most of the chatter about Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men has been about the film's technical aspects, specifically the preponderance of deftly executed single-take sequences that set a new standard for filmmaking logistics.
   While these breathtaking sequences are reason enough for anyone even slightly interested in the way movies are assembled to see this film, there's more going on than a bunch of cool stunts and gymnastic camerawork.
   Based on the dystopian novel The Children of Men by P.D. James (otherwise known as Baroness James of Holland Park), Children of Men is set in the Britain of 2027, when the world is disintegrating and, as the propaganda proclaims, "only England soldiers on." As one of the last relatively safe places on the planet, the country is besieged by illegal immigrants and terrorized by bombs (either placed by guerrilla groups or by a government hoping to foment a backlash against these groups). London is a shabby, gray city ringed by internment camps filled to overflowing with third world exotics and suspected malefactors. The only significant technological advances seem to have been made by advertising agencies.
   Global infertility is such that the extinction of the species seems a forgone conclusion -- the youngest person on the planet, an 18-year-old called "Baby Diego," has just been assassinated, occasioning a Diana-style outpouring of grief on behalf of the populace. (Diego, we're incidentally informed, always had a problem adjusting to the celebrity that accompanied his status as the world's junior citizen.) In response to the not unfounded general suspicion that carrying on is futile, the government is dispensing free suicide kits to anyone wanting to opt out.
   It's here we're introduced to Theo (Clive Owen), the kind of civil servant who doses his morning coffee with Scotch.
   Theo, we soon learn, used to be a political activist, and a group called the Fishes, led by Theo's exwife Julian (Julianne Moore), believes he can still be useful. They abduct him off the street and press him into service in a dangerous mission: He's to help smuggle a mysteriously pregnant young woman out of Britain and into the care of the shadowy (and possibly apocryphal) Human Project working to save mankind.
   While Cuaron's film is set in the future, he's obviously intent on using contemporary iconography to make his points. The scenes of Diego mourners placing flowers at the gates on an official building (a palace?) are reminiscent of the Diana debacle. Abu Ghraib images are paraphrased in internment camp scenes. In the background burble of electronic media we catch references to horrific attacks on New York and other cities. Environmental catastrophes have ravaged the planet, livestock (destroyed because of mad-cowtype diseases?) lie stacked and smoldering in fields.
   It's all stylish and quick-paced and exciting in the manner of a thinking person's thriller, but once things slow down it's harder to say what it all means. It's a pretty banal (and maybe not even accurate) observation to say that the world is going to hell, that we're killing ourselves, or that when fascism comes to power it will be carried in on the shoulders of the mob.
   Cuaron's film isn't morally confused -- although there's something unsavory and heavyhanded about having Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), the last hope of mankind, unveil her pregnancy to Theo while standing in a manger -- but it's a lot better in its specific realizations of what chaos and murder must look, sound and feel like than in offering anything of lasting sustenance. Yet what do you ask of a movie? A couple of hours outside your own head, a thrill ride through a blasted wilderness that's completely safe so long as you keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times? Here's a movie for you.

This story was published Friday, January 05, 2007