Liberal guilt mates with Science Fiction

Rating: 6/10 (28 August 2007)

The original P.D. James book about an apocalyptic global loss of fertility has been hijacked by Cuaron to produce a contemporary satire on Iraq, globalisation and terrorism, in a way I found crude, simplistic and intrusive. The white fertile heroine of the novel has become black, purely to make a point about race and immigration, an issue that saturates the content of the film and overpowers the central intriguing premise of a world without children. It's an ironic inversion of the apparent liberal ideal of colour-blindess, and made even more ironic by the portrayal of the equal dogma of Left and Right portrayed by the fascist regime and the revolutionary Fishes. Cuaron has purged his text of situations and character traits that don't suit his political agenda. True, he does make a pacier, more visually engaging film than the original book would have offered, and there are some tour de force sequences - the car reversing scene and a very Kubrick-esquire urban warfare scene. But I found the constant equivalence of Nazism to the current iraq conflict and security situation insulting to the intelligence. A man stands hooded like the Abu Ghraib prisoner, illegal immigrants are detained by the dept of 'Homeland Security' and most offensively, the adverts asking the public to be vigilant about immigrants are the same as those used in the wake of the London Tube bombings. Cuaron seems overburdened by liberal guilt and anger, which he indulges in two hours at my expense. And that of Universal - the film unsurprisingly recouped less than half of its production budget in the US, given its sentiments. Maybe it did better in Iran - if indeed a permit was granted for it to be shown. Cuaron doesn't need to look into the future to find fascist regimes. They're here and now: unfortunately, he's looking in the wrong hemisphere.