Shook me up bad

Rating: 8/10 (13 March 2007)

Women are no longer able to bare children. Thus, the age of man is ending, and the world is in chaos. But then, as the world is grieving over the loss of the youngest person alive, a miracle! A woman is pregnant for the first time in decades, and it is for our protagonist, Clive Owen, to take her away from the city to a sanctuary island in the Azors.
'Children Of Men' really is one of those movies that I try to avoid. You know, the kind of movie that, even as you are watching it, makes you feel bad and somewhat uneasy, and after leaving the theater, and those anxious feelings starts sinking in, you feel even worse.
The story, based on a P.D. James Novell, is quite simple, viewed from a thriller-movie-perspective. Owen and the girl are pretty much being chased through out the entire movie, but then, it is not that part of it that makes me feel the way I feel. It's the mood! It's too real! In this era, of threat of terror, global warming, draining of the oceans and so on, we are (I mean, I am) very perceptive to this sort of a nightmare. We can of course imagine it, the end of the world, as something very far away, but here we are presented to a vision, so near to reality, it is spooky, and the mental image of the future world is no longer that abstract. It is given a face, a setting and an ending.
We are shown a, not very likely, but too real vision of the apocalypse.
But this is such a fantastic movie. So well executed. Apart from the story and the great performances by the cast, the cinematography is just mind blowing. The shots are long, tight and sweaty - not very far from the work of Janusz Kaminski's in 'Saving Private Ryan' - and combined with the editing, the environments (where was this shot?), the sound track and the directing it is so striking, it shook me to the very bone.
So see it if you're up for some hard thinking and bad sleep. It will be worth it, but any way.