Clever, clever, clever

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2007)

I must laugh when I read critics saying things about this film like "powerful, but doesn't explain enough," or raising objections like "unfortunately, we never find out what caused the infertility in the first place" or "how a single baby is going to change anything is never made clear." Ha! Despite the inevitable appearance of the term *dystopian* in their reviews, these writers seem unaware that what they've seen is a satire  and satire, whether it's funny or whether it's sad, is always a kind of fantasy, and needn't play by the same rules as an artwork that pretends to exist in the real world. (I don't understand why these critics wanted the movie to explain itself more anyway, since the early scenes where it *does* do a lot of explaining are probably its worst.) In fact, probably the film this most resembles is another famous film satire, "Brazil," right down to its possibly-government-sponsored terrorism campaign and WWII-type propaganda. ("Suspicious? Report it" is right out of the earlier film, and the hilariously plausible "The world collapses . . . *only Britain soldiers on*" should have been.) On paper, the plot is just as classically comic, with a naïve, reluctant hero (he's even a civil servant!), recurring characters who pop up in unexpected places, and hairsbreadth, coincidence-based escapes.
But the key difference is that where Terry Gilliam inflated his movie with a cartoonish artifice, here director Alfonso Cuarón employs a punishing, sometimes shocking realism. The result is a film that, despite its (mostly visual) wit, feels so immediate, so intense, and so horrifying that you forget you're watching a comedy. But this isn't a criticism  it's exactly that irony that makes the film seem so fresh. We usually associate irony with things which make light of very serious subjects; "Dr. Strangelove" works by taking something grave and terrifying and making it ludicrous. Cuarón is even cleverer  he takes something ludicrous, a sci-fi chase caper, and makes it grave and terrifying. It's even moving  you feel like you've been through "Schindler's List" at the end of it. His technique is masterful . . . his style, and the artistry of his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, suggest documentary without ever fully giving over to it  apart from a somber opening theme by John Tavener, there is no original music, and the production team puts the viewer into the film at the best/worst of times, as in the escape from the Fishes' compound, the raid on Jasper's house, the final hellish descent into the Bexhill ghetto, and, especially, in the harrowing attack on Luke's van. This scene, filmed from inside the vehicle and executed without any cuts (that I noticed), is one of the most gut-wrenchingly horrifying movie moments I can remember. (But even this comes with a Hitchcockian wink, as the nominal female lead gets snuffed out a quarter way into the film, without so much as a final speech.)
But while the film uses the realistic to transform the absurd, it also incorporates a third, even more surprising element: a poetry that gives this world a unique haunted quality. London makes a great ruined city; it's hard to imagine a New World metropolis having the same impact, as modern European cities already carry with them such a sense of lost and ancient civilization. In its use of architecture (actually, not only in that), the film sometimes resembles the latter part of "Full Metal Jacket," only this time the ruined British buildings are actually supposed to *be* ruined British buildings. The wet, green English countryside is used as a contrast to the urban horrors (though any tranquility it suggests proves false); most important of all is the amazing placement of animals  they're everywhere in the film  which are used in various ways. They give us welcome reminders of human kindness (the many beloved pets) and irresponsibility (the dead animals from farms that have become unmaintainable or unnecessary). Most of all, they are reminders of hope  or at any rate of survival, as they appear in abandoned schools and buildings under siege. (And they, too, are reminiscent of Gilliam; remember the zoo animals that flourish in the plague-emptied Philadelphia of "Twelve Monkeys.")
In a world and directorial conception this size, the characters and the performances seem appropriately small. But they're all good. Claire-Hope Ashitey has an appropriate radiance, without seeming like too magical an earth mother (Kee's joke about immaculate conception is a great comment on our expectations). Clive Owen resists any temptation to be movie-heroic, and as a result Theo comes across as surprisingly, authentically brave, as when he plunges into the tank-surrounded building in the climactic battle scene. (Compare this character with Tom Cruise's in "War of the Worlds" and you'll realize what a failure that casting choice was.) Michael Caine gives a witty and ultimately very moving performance; his Jasper gets a brave death, too, although it's one of the moments where Cuarón edges perilously close to sadism. Pam Ferris brings real dignity to her faithful old nurse character (another familiar comic type), and Charlie Hunnam and Peter Mullan find the perfect scary/funny balance (you want to cheer when they get killed).
But again, it's all Cuarón's show, and "Children of Men" is really an amazing directorial achievement. There are movies that make you want to live inside them, and there are movies that make you want to live inside the brains of their creators. "Children of Men" is neither, but it gets under your skin as well as any movie in my recent memory; at least for a little while, it changed the way I looked at my own reality  I was looking for its world in the real one. "Don't you expect to hear gunshots?" I said to a friend as we walked up the sidewalk after the movie. I think he thought I was crazy. 10 out of 10.