The plan was to go see Smokin' Aces this weekend, but instead we ended up going to see Children of Men based on Felicia's mother's recommendation. Being the movie buff I am, I normally wouldn't listen to someone's mother's recommendation, but I figured I'd probably live a lot longer and have a happier life if I didn't piss off my future wife too much by ignoring her mother's advice. Note: this does not apply to sports.
As Dana Stevens of Slate mentions,
Alfonso Cuarón's dense, dark, and layered meditation on fertility, technology, immigration, war, love, and life itself may be the movie of the still-young millennium. And I don't just mean it's one of the best movies of the past six years. Children of Men, based on the 1992 novel by P.D. James, is the movie of the millennium because it's about our millennium, with its fractured, fearful politics and random bursts of violence and terror. Though it's set in the London of 2027, Cuarón's film isn't some high-tech, futuristic fantasy. It takes place in a grimly familiar location: the hell we are currently making for ourselves.
Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times gives the film similar praise:
The best science fiction talks about the future to talk about the now, and "Children of Men" very much belongs in that class. Made with palpable energy, intensity and excitement, it compellingly creates a world gone mad that is uncomfortably close to the one we live in. It is a "Blade Runner" for the 21st century, a worthy successor to that epic of dystopian decay.
Like that earlier film, "Children of Men" is based on a novel (P.D. James this time, not Philip K. Dick) and deals with the question of the future of human life. It brings so much urgency to the possibility of the world ending that we feel the kind of terror we would if the scenario were taking place tomorrow instead of 20 years in the future.
Also, in Alfonso Cuarón, "Children of Men" has a strong director with a powerhouse visual sense who is at home with both action sequences and philosophical concerns. Cuarón, with such widely diverse films as "A Little Princess" and "Y Tu Mamá También" behind him, demonstrates once again that no genre is beyond his mastery.
The plot hook of "Children of Men" is simple but devastating: the infertility of the entire human race. The date is 2027, and it's been 18 years since the Earth's last human child was born. James, whose novel has been altered considerably by the film's five credited screenwriters, says she wrote it to answer the question, "If there were no future, how would we behave?" The answer, in a word, is horribly.
To throw my own two cents into the hat, Children of Men is one of the best futuristic movies I've ever seen. You can forget about aliens, monsters from Mars, or iPods taking over, but the fractured world of political anarchy, streetcorner terrorists and a generally sense of hopelessness may not be far down the road.
One could choose to focus on the various death-rebirth cycles throughout the film, or the everpresent Christ figure of Clive Owen, but the true merit of the film lies in its ability to keep us clinging to our seat and hanging on to a sense of hope in a film where hope seems impossible.
Cold War Kids - "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" (live)