Children of Men
(2007)
review by Died with Boots On

“The world was stunned today by the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet.  The youngest person on earth was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old.”  Loosely based on P. D. James’s novel, ‘The Children of Men,’ ‘Children of Men’ presents a dystopian Britain as it soldiers on in a post-apocalyptic world.  The most striking thing about this 2027 setting is that it looks more to me like the pictures I’ve seen of Liverpool from the 1960s: a big, rust-eaten, industrial wasteland.  If it weren’t for the television screens that are plastered across buildings and storefronts like those in Times Square, I should have thought this movie took place during World War II.   While society isn’t exactly that primitive, the grit and grime of the streets as car bombs explode and immigrants are cattle prodded into cages or lined up and shot in the gutters is so powerfully stomach-turning that you almost wish that it was some long-forgotten chapter in a history book.

In the opening scene, we learn that the youngest person in the world was stabbed to death after he refused to give a psychotic fan his autograph.  Only moments later, the man was beaten to death by an angry mob.  Because of his celebrity, the death of Diego Ricardo is a reminder that the world is at death’s door.  In fifty years, there will be nothing left.  Theodore Faron (Owen), a melodramatic and apathetic chain-smoker who wanders without any rhyme or reason around the city, ducks out of his humdrum job at the office and begins to walk home.  As he begins his descent down a flight of stairs, two armed men wearing ski masks leap out and throw a burlap sack over his head and escort him quickly into a van that pulls up out of nowhere.  Kidnapped, the sack is ripped off his head to reveal a room wallpapered with newspaper articles about the end of the world, dating as far back as America’s invasion of Iraq.  Julian Taylor (Moore) walks into the room and apologizes for the theatrics.  She is the ringleader of a “terrorist” organization called ‘The Fishes,’ obviously an old friend of Faron’s.  She explains that she needs him to get travel permits for a young girl who needs to get to the coast and on a ship called ‘Tomorrow.’  Faron, who we learn was once a political activist, wants nothing to do with it.  When he blames her organization for a suicide bomber that almost killed him, she reminds him that it’s the government trying to churn up fear, that the ringing in his ears is their fault.  Returned to the street, Theo pays a visit to his cousin (Danny Huston), the curator of an art museum and depository for rescued pieces of art, like Michelangelo’s David.  But more importantly, he is a civil servant, who would have access to transit papers.  After much deliberation and a fake story about his made-up girlfriend’s sick mother, he arranges a joint travel permit for him, meaning that he would have to accompany Julian’s girl.

Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the second-in-command of ‘The Fishes,’ drives Theo, Julian, the girl, whose name is Kee (Ashitey), and Miriam (Pam Ferris), the woman who will be accompanying Kee, to the first security checkpoint.  While they are driving through a densely wooded forest, caught between two slopes, a car that has been set on fire rolls down the from the top of the hill and barricades the road.  Panicking, Luke tries to backup, but within a hair of a second, thousands of angry hill people ambush the car, armed with Molotov cocktails, pitchforks, small handguns, sticks, bones, and whatever else they can muster.   Screaming like banshees, the people start smashing in the windows, slashing the tires, and reaching in through the broken glass to hurt whoever they could get their hands on.  Eventually, Luke throws it so hard in reverse that they seem to give up, panting.  But out of nowhere, a motorbike comes ripping down the road after them, the driver taking careful aim, and shooting Julian in the throat.  Outrunning the outlaws, a convoy of police starts rolling down the road in the other direction.  They think they’re safe until two policemen pull Luke over.  He complies, but only until he can get a clear shot at them, at which point he squeezes off a shell into each of their heads, and takes off toward a safe house.  Because Julian is dead, Luke becomes the new terrorist leader.  Kee asks to speak with Theo alone.  Miriam brings Theo to the barn where she is staying, and leaves them.  The girl takes off her clothes, and reveals her stomach, her nine-month-pregnant stomach.  Now he knows what’s at stake.

In the middle of the night, headlights shine into Theo’s window, waking him up.  He cracks his door and hears muffled shouting.  He carefully tiptoes downstairs and hides.  Luke is talking to the man who was on the motorbike!  The man who shot Julian in the throat!  He overhears them say that they are going to use Kee’s baby as leverage to start their uprising.  They don’t plan to lead her to the boat ‘Tomorrow,’ to ‘The Human Project,’ but plan to keep her where she is to give “The Fishes” a weapon against the government.  He also overhears them say that they plan to kill him tomorrow morning.  Hearing this, he storms upstairs and wakes Miriam and Kee up.  He tells them that they have to leave now.  With the police surrounding them on three sides, and “The Fish” vigilantes hot on their tail, they go to an out-of-the-way cottage in the woods where Theo’s old friend Jasper (Caine) lives.  The cottage resembles a greenhouse decked out with solar panels.  Jasper is an old protestor who spends his time growing “strawberry pot” and taking care of his catatonic wife.  He happily agrees to take them under his wing.  He tells Miriam about how Theo used to be married to Julian, talks about why women are infertile.  He jokes about a man in “The Human Project” who ate all the storks and doesn’t know why there are no more babies.  Miriam tells him that they plan to reach a buoy just beyond the Bexhill Refugee Camp.  Jasper bribes a policeman with his strawberry pot into arresting them and taking them to Bexhill, where they can escape into the sewers and take a rowboat to the buoy.  Unfortunately, ‘The Fishes’ find out about this plan, and the military finds out about ‘The Fishes.’  To compound the problem, Kee has her first contraction on the train car to Bexhill and begins labor.  Letting anyone know that she’s pregnant is sure suicide.

The most astounding thing about this movie is the cinematography.  Everything is on such a grand scale and nothing falls short of breathtaking.  There’s one scene in particular that was filmed in one take and in one fluid piece.  The only way I was able to tell is because there is blood spatter on the lens of the camera, so even if the scene was stitched together using CGI, they couldn’t fake the blood droplets on the lens.  The writing of this movie is brilliant, and I don’t just mean the dialogue.  I also mean the set dressing.  A surprising amount of the dialogue goes unspoken, or, when spoken, in another, unsubtitled language.  “Shantih Shantih Shantih,” for example, is uttered throughout the movie.  A T. S. Elliot admirer myself, I recognized this mantra-like phrase from his poem ‘The Waste Land.’  Not only that, but those words make up the last line of the poem.  After the closing credits of ‘Children of Men’ roll, the phrase flashes across the screen and lingers, the last line of the movie.  I’m sure the parallel was intentional.  Other allusions include a big, inflated pig that flies high above an industrial badland, much like Pink Floyd’s pig from the ‘Animals’ album, homage to George Orwell.  There are several ‘Ichthys’ fish symbols graffitied on walls in connection with ‘The Fishes.’  There’s even social commentary on the stark contrast between the rich and the poor.  Theo’s cousin lives in a vacantly pristine chateau high above the streets, not even thinking about the end of mankind.  He holes himself up in a museum filled with the last remaining artifacts from every corner of the earth and idyllically sips his red wine.  Even the car that Theo is taxied in is a Rolls Royce.  A brass band gives a performance in the park with all sorts of exotic animals like a zebra and a camel.

Even the OST is fantastic.  Featuring songs like ‘Hush’ by Deep Purple, ‘The Court of the Crimson King’ by King Crimson, ‘Wait’ by The Kills, ‘Ruby Tuesday’ by Franco Battiato, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ by The Libertines, and ‘Running the World’ by Jarvis Cocker.  The pulpier British pop trash, like The Libertines, is what Michael Caine’s character calls “zen music,” which is an ironically appropriate way of putting it.  The John Tavener score is also very good.  All in all, ‘Children of Men’ is an incredibly different and imaginative piece of moviemaking from ‘Y Tu Mamá También’s’ Alfonso Cuarón.  I haven’t enjoyed myself for one hundred minutes straight in months, and I’m immensely glad I went to see it.  This is better than the ‘V for Vendettas’ and ‘Babels’ and ‘The Fountains’ of last year.  It was visceral and beautiful at the same time.  I love this movie!