"Children of Men" (2006) - Movie Review

Handling a futuristic world opens the doors for wide range of imagination since the responsibility of reasoning out some of the bizarre logics with respect to flying saucers and paper thin screens can be lessened, while at the same time, it elevates the responsibility of explaining the reasons for a society with lot of social chaos or niceties. “Children of Men”, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, may not address the later that in depth but just grazes over it, while having the strongest emotional imagination of land with infertile women and no possibility of further human kind.

Theo (Clive Owen), an alcoholic working for the government gets a strange offer from his ex-wife, Julian (Julianne Moore) who is the leader of a group, claiming that the group fights against the torments by government against the immigrants. The mission is to transfer a product of a strange miracle, a pregnant girl to supposedly “The Human Project”, run by a group of scientists investing in finding out the reasons for infertility and saving the human kind. The journey from the city to the destiny is “Children of Men”.

Clive Owen is an impressive actor and a role of Theo, he can do it sleepwalking and that’s exactly what he does. His acting skill comes out specifically when all of his dear ones are hurt one by one. The other casts do their job well but nothing excelling of particular person since Clive Owen takes most of the screen.

The society Alfonso Cuarón shows is filled with chaos but a very possible reality. There are certain routines, conditions, processes that the humans take it for granted. The story basically eliminates one of the main processes and then lets the viewers decide on it. I was not impressed by the movie “Brazil” which falls under the same genre, basically due to the reason that putting oneself in a totally random and imaginative society like that seemed impossible. Unlike “Brazil”, this movie facilitates the viewer easily to put themselves in to this chaotic society, still imaginative enough and tangentially possible realism. The complex scrambling of words in my previous sentence is what this movie generates. On an honest note, the movie did not strike as extraordinary as the critics suggested, but playing back the movie in my head, the feeling of no more children for next 20 years and one fine day there is a hope for it, brings some kind of strange enigma. The emotion will be unexplainable, yet striking and hence that is certainly a credit to the story and its creator, P.D. James who wrote this novel in 1992.

Camerawork by Emmanuel Lubezki is the work of excellence, especially in the final 20 minutes. A company named Doggicam Systems' Power Slide system invented special attachable equipment to the camera for this movie and it has proved its worth through this motion picture. Even though at couple of places, it seems like a video game, it directly places the viewer in the spot giving a breathtaking view of the environment. Artwork crew has done its job to perfection and special mention to the undisturbed free flowing screenplay as well.

Having mentioned all that, the movie still is missing the main ingredient of impacting the viewer at their hearts. In the past umpteen years of movies, the viewers have witnessed tons of escorting a person in extreme situations and hence even though with vivid artistry, the motion picture did not create the “impact” factor. Nevertheless, “Children of Men” is worth the watch for its brilliance of imagination, technical excellence of camera and the performance of Clive Owen.