As a story, it is a promise unfulfilled...abridged review

Rating: 4/10 (15 April 2007)

As a movie, director Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men is state-of-the-art. It has incredible action, sound and visual effects. The acting is believable and compelling. However, as a story, it is a promise unfulfilled. It starts with a premise pregnant with questions, implications and possibilities. They are left unasked and unanswered.
The story revolves around Theo ( Clive Owen) who is contacted by his ex wife and former fellow activist, Julian (Julianne Moore). As a leader of Fish, a terrorist organization, she has a special project for him- to smuggle the only pregnant woman in England, a black immigrant named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) to the coast. They must take a perilous trek across the countryside, avoiding the police and the terrorists. It is a trip which gives the audience a slice of this dark land and era, purportedly the best the world presently has to offer.
Upon reaching the coast, Kee will be picked up by a clandestine ship sponsored by a mythical organization called the Human Project. It appears that all of humanity's hopes lie with this child. The Human Project, about which no one appears to know the truth- even of its very existence- becomes the Holy Grail for the few honest brokers in this morass. When it appears that they are safe (mother and child are the only ones to get there), the movie ends with the promise fulfilled.
For some inexplicable reason, only humans became infertile. There was no plague, no nuclear explosion, no increase in the ozone- it just happened. This is an event of Biblical proportions, like the Death of the First Born. How can science explain a disease or event that singles out only humans, and all over the world simultaneously, not spreading to reveal some epidemiological source? It doesn't occur in animals or plants. The world's food supply appears to be intact. In fact everything appears to be intact except this single, and singular, event. Yet there is no peep of wonderment about this gargantuan, universal, and still personal, catastrophe. The only response offered comes out of a B.F. Skinner laboratory. The stimulus is infertility- the reaction is despair, aggression and rage. The egocentricity of this society reeks. Everyone is feeling sorry for himself for not seeing a future in progeny. In this self pity, they destroy their personal future and well-being. It is no surprise that this self-indulgent society's favorite drug is a suicide pill.
Are these truly the only possible human responses to a severe crisis? Does Cuarón really believe there is no nobility in humankind, that the sum of his miseries point to governments, militias and events beyond his control? Are peoples' resources really exhausted when science fails to come up with a solution? Is there nothing an individual can do to elevate himself? This appears to be more a reflection of the director's own cynicism than the reality I live in. If the viewer accepts this premise, to what extent has he limited himself? Whatever the cause of the disaster, the response to it is adolescent. Peoples' willingness to allow themselves to be further subjugated in order to maintain the comforts they have condemns them further. Cuarón would have you believe that dignity was wrested from them, but they removed their own dignity.
If anything, this is a deep condemnation of our modern world which promises fulfillment with things, removal of distress with drugs, relationships without commitment, and its concomitant decreasing demographic. If the movie is any reflection of an outcome to our present circumstances, it is to show how detached we are our from feelings and actions, and how irresponsible we have become as a result.
But Cuarón painted a monochromatic picture. There are people who live with meaning. Some genuinely believe in a Creator who is intimate with the world and who deliberately placed us as stewards of the earth. They will say that there are no coincidences and no accidents. They see themselves as responsible for their actions and that they do affect the world around them, even when they do not know precisely how. In response to the catastrophe, some may pray for forgiveness for themselves and all mankind in the belief that redirecting thought and vision does manifest in the concrete. And they know that thought precedes action. Some may accept personal responsibility for not having done enough to ease the suffering of their fellow humans and redouble their efforts to reach out. And they are not for themselves alone. Some may work to find those in despair and offer personal comfort and support, not the anonymous chemical soporifics which offer only unconsciousness and death. And they are the ones who would burst Joy's grape, knowing full well that its companion is melancholy; so would empathize with the despairing.
As to the future, there is an unbearable focus on a single baby being the salvation of the world. The Christ-like image oozes like a sour sauce from old meat hoping to be made fresh by removing traces of spirit. People fighting and killing each other pause in their killing at the sound of an infant's cries, momentarily fascinated by their vaunted hope. Clearly it is only a passing fancy, for the baby barely moves beyond the perilous domain when the shooting resumes. If their aggression and despair was for lack of progeny, it would seem that the presence of a baby would attract more than a passing interest.
For the full review see http://orderfrochaos.blogspot.com/