A Fable: England's green and unpleasant land's.

Rating: 9/10 (16 January 2007)

Caution: This review's second chapter contains minor book Spoilers, concerning the P.D. James novel The Children of Men.
Director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and Producer to Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Mexican born Alfonso Cuarón has now delivered us Children of Men. Phyllis Dorothy James White, the British born (1920) writer penned her 1992 novel The Children of Men and having worked for the British Civil Service, spent time as a magistrate and governed the BBC her full and illustrious career is never endless. Alongside the movies screen writing team she took the 19th annual USC Libraries Scripter Award, too, the 2007 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Adapted Best Screenplay.
As a book on its own it works well, as an adaptation it works extremely well, while only taking minor snippets from the novel and adding and subtracting their own brand of themes and concepts Children of Men is now one of the better movies to emerge from 2006, and notwithstanding the modern adaptation of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale.
With this dystopian world ravished by war, paranoia and the frustrations, and failures, of Man the Orwellian vision of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian future is now complete and amongst us. Female fertility has become obsolete, the Human race cannot reproduce, and no child has been born on the face of the planet for eighteen years. Man, and his future, is dying. Soon he shall be extinct. Theo, the beaten, downtrodden and middle-aged ex-political activist has unwittingly become involved in a war of an underground revolt. Here he is active once more, in the perilous journey across England's Home Counties, with a young girl, Kee, who, to Theo's bewilderment is pregnant. The first pregnant woman for more than eighteen years. This secret must be protected, at all cost, and mother and child must flee to the mysterious and enigmatic Human Project, across the seas. Their flight is a constant fight for survival. Who can be trusted? Who can keep a secret? This is the hopelessness and disdain that Alfonso Cuarón has projected, as Man is slowly becoming extinct, he, as a race, must come to terms with its own passing, that Man is not infallible, not immortal and that with His own future He must also prepare and cope with his own inevitable demise.
With this premise Alfonso Cuarón, his scriptwriters and crewmembers have turned Children of Men into a vision of cinematic mastery; this is a dark world, that is, over the last eighteen years, torn itself apart, albeit in the physical, emotional and spiritual form. The mistrust of anything foreign is quickly dispersed and rejected; ethnic cleansing has never had it so good, with England's policy of returning non-nationals to their respective homelands. Reminders of past European xenophobic atrocities' such as 1930's Germany and 1990's Yugoslavia comes into mind. Here, in London 2027, with the Governing bodies and their prison camps that are brutal, callous and unforgiving, we now have a Police State, that one Theodore Faron, and working for a Governmental body the Ministry of Energy, has to endeavour.
There is no government ruler here, this has been replaced by a Warden, The Warden of England, Ministers are represented by democracy, here anarchy is governed by a self-appointed Warden, and here too is the pecking order of the British class system, this is emphasised more by the use of the concept of animals. The rebel underground activists who call themselves The Fishes. While Julian has the tiny tattoo of a swallow on her neck, the symbol for independent freedoms perhaps? The tiny fragile songbird whose wings, sadly, are clipped. Theo, on the other hand, has been given the qualities of what appears to be of Saint Francis, Patron Saint for animals, it is the animals in this movie that seem to have a connection with Theo, a six sense that they, and only they, can recognise the quality of a higher being, a Saviour. In the final battle, we have a heard of sheep, controlled sheep and their dogs running, fleetingly, through the streets, the symbol of chaos of the masses that are guided and pushed by the dogs. Which in turn are also controlled by the pigs, and toward the end, we repeat the scene that is hanging on the wall of the Warden's dinning room Picasso's black and white painting Guernica and the effects of war and disorder. The ruling classes that populate the schism between the oppressed and their high-ranking counterparts. The all seeing pigs, their affluence, power and greed that crush these doomed sheep, and guide them to their slaughter.
Emmanuel Lubezki's work here as cinematographer is astounding. His talents have rewarded him with numerous recognitions for Children of Men, be it B.A.F.T.A., the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA, Online Film Critics Society Awards and the Venice Film Festival, and not forgetting his 2007 Academy Award nomination for "Best Achievement in Cinematography". His vision is a powerful thoroughfare of Mans destructive capabilities, and with an insight to seeing the real world via dark, bleak and graphic detailing that war can bring. However, where the Children of Men transcends into great cinematic craftwork is the style of camera-work that Alfonso Cuarón has developed, with his extendedly long camera shots, and with minimal edits, we literally are alongside Theo and his contemporaries. These long uncut hand-held shots are what makes Children of Men work at ground level, and with this believability, photography and sensitivities we have a movie that has delivered.