Children of Men creates a brilliant contradiction: it's dark, but it's illuminating

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2007)

I saw "Children of Men" in the first weekend of its commercial run, at a packed house in Century City.
It's a dark film about despair and hope, but its great virtue (at least this is MY hope) is that it illustrates the logical extensions of many strands of current public policy. If we keep allowing brutalism and mischief to multiply abroad, what will it look like when it festers and seeps in under our doors?
What would life be like if you had a certain amount of wealth or privilege and you built a bubble of normality around you? What would happen as the "cost" for maintaining this bubble became more and more prohibitive and more of your friends couldn't keep up? In this film, there are lots of different coping mechanisms on display. Some characters turn to a resistance movement, which ultimately is as ruthless as the forces it opposes. Another character tries to get by on his wits (and his ganja) and is steamrolled by the urgent business at hand. Another relies on a religion that seems to be an off-shoot of New Age idealism that looks at danger as something of an inconvenient attitude problem. Another character, one that has assembled considerable power and treasure is asked how he copes with the chaos just outside the door and he replies, "I don't pay attention to it."
But worse, what would life be like if you didn't have sufficient wealth to maintain your freedom? In this exercise (in this movie), civil liberties are shattered. "Illegal immigrants" are collected like Pol Pot-era Cambodian outlaws, put in cages and taken to camps. Some are displayed in poses from Abu Graeb, others... who knows? We the viewers of the film, move on to other vital business.
So, bravo to P.D. James and the five other credited writers: Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. And of course, bravo to Alfonso Cuarón, who held this all together as an organic, nuanced vision.
Bravo.