Precarious Balance Between Nihilism and Hope Captured with Bravado by Cuarón

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2007)

Director Alfonso Cuarón lends both scarifying grit and unexpected heart to this propulsive, rewarding 2006 screen adaptation of P.D. James' 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel about a hopeless future with no children. There have been many apocalyptic films that deal with Armageddon in many different forms, yet this one reverberates from a most plangent storyline of global collapse as Cuarón thoughtfully brings it down to a human-size scale. Set in England only twenty years hence, the film shows a relentlessly bleak landscape not too far imagined from the present. Cuarón manages to tether us to the fantastical story by making 2027 London look realistically desultory and shell-shocked with its faded double-deckers and Bangkok-style tuk-tuks. In turn, the Bexhill refugee camp later in the film has a startling resemblance to the Abu Ghraib prison and the surrounding streets a dead ringer for the shots of violent warfare we are used to seeing in Iraq on CNN.
The plot centers on Theo Faron, a former political activist who has been numbed into apathy by the increasingly nihilistic state of the planet. Because its isolated island geography has ensured the success of an emerging fascist government, Great Britain has become the only nation to survive the worldwide nuclear terrorism. Foreigners are automatically labeled illegal immigrants and placed in brutalizing internment camps, and at 18, the youngest person on the planet has just been stabbed to death. The news is devastating to the masses because infertility has plagued the planet for nearly two decades with no hope for the human race to survive. Kidnapped by the Fishes, a revolutionary group supporting the foreigners' human rights, Theo finds out the dastardly act was masterminded by his ex-wife Julian, who heads the group. Her motivation becomes clear as they are holding a West African girl named Kee, who happens to be eight months pregnant. The rest of the film focuses on the clandestine effort to transport Kee to the Human Project, an offshore organization dedicated to reversing the global infertility.
There are so many strong visual cues and unexpected plot turns that it is impossible to be bored by the story penned by no less than five screenwriters including Cuarón. A powerful example is the meticulous portrayal of Theo's cousin Nigel, the one official who can secure travel documents for Kee's passage, as the curator of the world's surviving masterworks (including Michelangelo's damaged David and Picasso's Guernica) in the reconverted Tate Modern. Another is the superb cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, richly textured in establishing the bombed-out, authoritarian universe and documentary-like once the more violent aspects take over the movie. Particularly impressive is the extended scene where the Fishes attempt to escape an aggressive ambush in a speeding car, as well as the concluding battle scenes which culminate into an unexpected religious allegory.
After his scene-stealing turns in "Closer" and "Inside Man", Clive Owen really owns this movie from start to finish with a richly complex portrait of a man who discovers his sense of purpose against seemingly insurmountable odds. In fact, his committed performance holds together some of the more far-fetched plot developments like Theo's too-easy escape from the safe house. Claire-Hope Ashitey provides a striking presence as the vulnerable but amazingly resilient Kee. Also making vivid impressions are the reliable Julianne Moore as Julian, Chiwetel Ejiofor as fellow revolutionary Luke, Danny Huston as Nigel, Pam Ferris as Kee's self-appointed guardian Miriam (who provides an essential back story behind the infertility), Peter Mullan as the corrupt policeman Syd, and an especially colorful Michael Caine as Theo's perpetually quixotic friend Jasper. This is nicely audacious film-making, a creative masterstroke that marks Cuarón as an important creative force in cinema.