Film Review: CHILDREN OF MEN

I have struggled and struggled with how to write this review - let alone begin it. I seriously cannot remember the last time a film affected me as much as Children of Men. Director Alfonso Cuaron, after rising to such fame with Y Tu Mama Tambien that he was given Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to helm, here has created a film that is heartbreaking, soul-stirring, and - most importantly - life-affirming. THIS kind of film is what moviemaking was born to be - real art. I just hope I can do it justice in a short review.

The film is based on a novel by P.D. James, the story set in 2027 - in a world ravaged by disease, terrorism, and nuclear fallout (yep, very grim stuff). Humanity has become infertile, the last baby - Baby Diego - born in 2009 ... and in fact the film opens with Baby Diego's murder - the youngest person on earth now gone, as Britain mourns the loss of any potential for humanity's future. Britain, in fact, has become a wasteland of violence and oppression - immigration practically a crime to the point where refugees (or "Fugees", as they're called here) are rounded up and put into concentration camps, any insubordinance dealt with via a beating or bullet to the head.

Clive Owen is brilliant as Theo Faron, a former activist now working within the system who is contacted by his ex, Julian (Julianne Moore) - leader of the resistance group known as "The Fishes" - to help with getting papers for a young fugee woman to escape Britain for a sanctuary-at-sea known as The Human Project ... a group trying to find a cure for humanity's infertility so that the human race can go on. Julian knows Theo's cousin can arrange a passport and papers, and Theo indeed does so, for a price (and also out of the love he still has for Julian; the couple had a son, together, Dylan, who died from the plague that initially wiped out most of humanity - and created the infertility, most likely - back in 2008). The only hitch - the papers require that Theo travel with the girl, named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), at least to the border, and before he knows it, Theo finds himself embroiled in a twisted plot where he no longer knows who the good guys or the bad guys really are ... as he fights like hell, through the destruction that is now Britain, to escort Kee to safety.

For he has no choice, because Kee is eight months pregnant - the first woman in nearly 19 years to conceive - and she alone, with Theo's help, may hold mankind's future in her belly.

I could write forever about this film. Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki have created a world of grim despair for humanity, a world at war with itself - a war it seemingly cannot win. Combat and action scenes are shot at close-range, in an in-your-face style that makes you feel you are right there in the middle of it all. Owen and Moore are utterly convincing, and the supporting cast - Ashitey, plus Chiwetel Ejiofor as Julian's second-in-command, Michael Caine as Theo's pothead-hippie best friend, and Pam Ferris as Kee's midwife/companion to the boat that will lead them to safety - all turn in performances so natural, you easily forget these are actors speaking scripted words. I had dinner about twenty minutes after watching this film, and as I sat eating I began to think of the last, say, twenty minutes of the film - and I began to weep; my eyes not just getting watery, but real tears that flowed down my cheeks. I let them come, because behind the tears the film also filled me with a real hope for humanity's potential - of knowing that what we think of every day as so important being, in reality, total crap compared to the real problems of life and living. Children of Men, even in all its grimness and despair, is also perhaps - in its way - the most life-affirming film I have ever seen. I know I will never forget it. This film not only reaches out to (and breaks) your heart - it also wraps itself around your soul.