"Children of Men" is an allegory we can only hope and pray never manifests in our lifetime.

Rating: 9/10 (8 December 2006)

"Children of Men" is, in many ways, an allegory, one we can only hope and pray never manifests in our lifetime.
When the film begins, everyone in Britain is mourning. Not because another beloved princess has met a senseless end, but because baby Diego, the world's youngest person at slightly over eighteen-years-old, has just died.
The year is 2027 and age (or youth) is so important that it is measured down to the minute. This reverence for life, or certain people's lives, is significant because it underscores humanity's doom due to the infertility of women.
Ironically, in the dystopian society that Britain has become, not every life is of equal value. The country has closed its borders. Its military forces round up Fuji's (a cheeky name for illegal immigrants), who are "hunted down like cockroaches" and carted off to prisons (actually ghettoes) that would make Abu Graib look like a vacation destination.
But immigrants aren't the only ones who have to live in fear. The ubiquitous electronic media encourage all citizens to "report any suspicious activity" they might encounter, whatever that might mean. Under these circumstances, death by cop just may be a better alternative.
One man who apparently tries to avoid that end is Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a dissipated, whiskey guzzling former outspoken liberal who struggles to survive by leading an ordinary life. Or at least as ordinary as he can in such an oppressive society.
Unfortunately for Faron, he is recruited by Julian (Julianne Moore), his former lover, now the leader of an all-purpose radical faction that will stop at nothing to unmask government corruption. Julian's quest is to obtain papers for Kee (newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey) so that the young woman may be safely delivered into the hands of The Human Project, an underground organization whose mission is to preserve humanity. Why this is necessary is no mystery, except perhaps to Faron, but it is such an important plot point that it would be unfair to reveal it.
Whether for love or money, or perhaps to feel that old rush of adrenaline he used to get when he and Julian were young and innocent, Faron agrees. He turns to the reclusive Nigel (Danny Huston), an old friend who is holed-up among some of history's great works of art, such as Michelangelo's "David," and Picasso's "Guernica." You have to give Nigel credit. Despite his head-in-the-sand mentality, he is committed to ending his days surrounded by things of beauty.
This elaborate set up is the launching point for the rest of the plot, which carefully weaves back story into the narrative. Director Alfonso Cuarón ("Y Tú Mamá También," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"), who co-wrote the screenplay with Timothy Sexton (HBO's "Live from Baghdad") based on the P.D. James novel, does not overlook any opportunity to present a visual connection between today's world and the one depicted in the film. Citizen's pay homage to baby Diego in public floral displays (not unlike those in honor of Princess Diana, as seen in Stephen Frears' "The Queen"), Muslim fundamentalists march down streets bearing arms and banners, and sluices emit sludgy liquid into rivers. All of this is taken to extremes in the film. It is a world in which everything, if not everyone, has gone mad.
Missing from the script, however, is any sense of what is going on beyond this limited universe. "The world has collapsed. Only Britain soldiers on," one newscaster reports, but we are never told how or why this calamity came about. Why humans cannot reproduce is never overtly stated, but it isn't unreasonable to believe that environmental pollutants and the "flu pandemic of 2008" are, at least in part, responsible for humanity's demise. Why, though, are other animals exempt (in one scene a kitten claws Faron's pants leg), and where are all the scientists when you need them?
This apocalyptic vision of a bleak and not-too-distant future is nothing new in film or literature ("1984," "Brave New World," and "Blade Runner" come to mind). But Cuarón presents his vision in such a mirthless landscape that it makes us hope we won't be alive to see if it manifests twenty years from now.
Cinematography, by Emmanuel Lubezki (who provided a very different look to last year's "The New World"), is astonishingly real, a verité style that exudes a raw, cold grittiness apropos the material. Editing (by Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez) invokes immediacy, particularly in the battle scenes of the film's climax.
Performances all around are strong, with Michael Caine doing a turn as a former liberal political cartoonist turned hippie counterculturist, replete with long hair and an ample drug stash, and Chiwetel Ejiofor ("Dirty Pretty Things") playing against his usual good guy image. But the film is carried by Owen, who proves once again that he is this generation's Richard Burton, and by Ashitey, whose lines of comic relief are delivered with the proper earnest tenor.
"Children of Men" is an effective cautionary tale, a reminder that what we do today has a direct impact on the future. As one person says, "It's very odd what happens in the world without children's voices." Let's hope we don't ever have to live in such joylessness.