Hope recovery

Rating: 9/10 (28 June 2007)

Lots of spectacularly unsophisticated reviews chanting the 'not-properly-elaborated' mantra, some of them objecting an anti-American edge, too  a leftist one at that! My oh my! So let me interject my two points on those issues: 1. It's not holes in the plot, it's your ignorance. Go get a clue about the world you live in, then please give a damn. 2. Nothing anti-American here  just some anti-Guantanamo, anti-Abu-Ghraib, anti-fascist, anti-ignorant, anti-dumbass and anti-Hollywood stuff. 'Children of men' is actually the most wholesome and honest movie in years, and by movie I mean absorbing entertainment made in the classic, sensible tradition. Also with enough innovation to make a technical buff's heart sing. It has points, and those points are all beautifully integrated into the narrative and scenery, so that a discerning viewer can decode them all, preferably during repeated viewings. It's all in the pictures  that's what I call cinematography. What the film lacks is spoon-feeding and shiny CGI candies that would assure a smooth 'consumer experience'. This is a bumpy ride through a sordid world, with long, hectic shots exploring a possible near-future which threatens to be the last paragraph in the story of our race. Mother Nature presenting the bill while humans keep chasing tail is DEFINITELY NOT a far-fetched issue  it's a reality that is affecting our life more and more each day, on multiple grounds. People going unfertile would be just a logical culmination of our estrangement from (and over-abusing of) our natural basics. Cuaron draws a frighteningly plausible picture of the imminent future, but through this he does exactly the same thing his fallible heroes do in the movie: by acknowledging a conscience, he recovers hope.