recommended for anyone interested in a (rewardingly) bleak futuristic thriller

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2007)

Alfonso Cuaron, make no mistake, knows what he's doing with the style of Children of Men. Following from the same cues he started off with Y Tu Mama Tambein, his and Emmanual Lebiznaki's camera never stops to go onto a dolly or just to stand still, it's always hand-held and on edge with the characters and the dire situations they're set in 2029 Britain. Sometimes this allows for some really incredible long-takes implemented (my favorite a very pivotal death/chase scene that occurs surprisingly early in the film), allowing Cuaron with complete subjective freedom of perspective. There's never a moment to relax in this world, as just setting a cup of coffee in the middle of the city square could have the next second arriving a bomb just next door. However, perhaps if only for me, the style called attention to itself sometimes, or to the fact that it's all 'just a movie'. Not that there isn't some very gritty action and horrific bloody violence that comes out, notably in the climactic "uprising" as Clive Owen's Theo almost escapes being annihilated among the total chaos in an especially long take (blood spats on the lens included).
The whole set-up of the story of Children of Men is simple, and I (unfortunately maybe) knew most of it from the trailer. Owen works a dead-end job in the only country where there is some "stability" (note the quotes) at a time in the world where infertility is dead and the youngest man alive has just died. There's terrorists everywhere, no one can really rest easy, and the police state makes it very hard to get around on the roads, not to mention the immigration problem (sound familiar?). Enter in Julianne Moore's character, who was once lovers with Theo, and needs his help to get a foreigner across to safer grounds. But it becomes further complicated when the cat's out of the bag- she's pregnant, and needs to get to safety to have her child. So then the characters are off on the mission, however complicated further by the (well laid) twist that the group that were originally going to help get the woman to the "Human Project"- where she could be looked after with the best spark of hope- really just want the baby as collateral to propagate their uprising against the government. Meanwhile, the chaos continues and continues.
In a sense, this is probably the bleakest futuristic "pro-life" movie ever made, however pro-life in relation to Children of Men is actually a necessity rather than a political or religious point. There seems to be no respite from civilization eating itself up at the thought that humanity will end if procreation becomes nothingness, and so part of the strength in Children of Men is seeing the conviction behind the main message in the film. In a time where there is practically a culture of death by way of a lack of governmental control and a burst of extremism, the only hope is new life, if only in a small dose. Populating around this message- which only becomes a little thicker by the end of the film- is a strong performance from Owen, who maybe doesn't have as much range as usual due to him being mostly a reactionary (mostly with shock and conflict, and early on malaise) at what's around him. Michael Caine also turns in the amusingly human supporting turn as a pot-smoking ex-political cartoonist. Even the woman who plays the most crucial one in the picture- who may or may not name her child Bazooka- is very good in the part.
So why didn't I respond to it with overwhelming enthusiasm and with a place for it in my top 10 of the year? Hard to say even hours after seeing it. Maybe there is almost a certain lack of momentum even as the clock ticks down on the pregnancy. The bleakness that carried over the picture is so thick and disparaging it's half a relief from seeing other futuristic pictures that don't deliver so much on the dread and decay of humanity gone to the dogs, and half a desire for it to not be as such. No doubt I recommend it to all who'd like a serious trip into an original Orwellian-nightmare-popcorn-thriller (if that makes sense), though I don't think it's necessarily a full-blown masterpiece...
AMENDMENT TO PREVIOUS REVIEW (month & a half later): I rewatched the film, and I liked it even more; it gets deeper, with its message more impactful and the staggering long-takes even more powerful- and it is one of the best directed films of the decade.