Children of Men (2006) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Oh, baby, baby, how were we supposed to know?

In a near future dystopia, humanity has lost the ability to create children. Now with the end of society on the horizon one man is tasked with helping the last pregnant woman to escape to a better place with her child. It’s a film that deals as much with hope as it does chance, creating a dystopian world that feels extremely real and terrifying.

First Impressions

This trailer presents a man who is bereft of hope in a dystopian future where children are unable to be conceived. With nothing left, he is resigned to a future where humanity just slowly fades away. Until he is kidnapped by a group led by his ex-wife and asked to help transport a pregnant woman to the safety of a new place called the Human Project. What follows are scenes of civil unrest and armored police forces standing in the way of his latest quest. These are the Children of Men.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In November of 2027 the youngest person on the planet, Baby Diego (who was 18 years old) dies, plunging the London public into a melancholy state. Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a worker at the Ministry of Energy, uses Diego’s death as an excuse to get off work early. He narrowly misses getting caught in a terrorist explosion at a coffee shop and takes the train to meet his friend Jasper (Michael Caine). They drive to Jasper’s hidden country home passing buses loaded with immigrants being transported to Bexhill, the local detainee camp. Theo is angry about the state of the country, which was already on the decline prior to the worldwide infertility epidemic that started in 2009.

The next day Theo is kidnapped by a group of radical terrorists known as the Fishes. He is taken to a secret location where he meets his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore), the leader of the Fishes. She needs his help and connections to secure a travel permit for a young girl. He meets with his cousin, Nigel (Danny Huston), a ministry official who runs the “Ark of the Arts,” a program to save important works from humanity. Theo is able to convince Nigel to give him two transit permits. Returning to Julian, Theo says he was only able to get a joint set of papers and he will escort the young woman, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey).

Julian, Theo, Kee, and Fishes members Miriam (Pam Ferris) and Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor) drive to the drop zone but are ambushed by armed individuals. Julian is shot and killed. Their car is pulled over by two policemen on a country road, and Luke shoots them both. The survivors make it to a remote farm where Kee tells Theo that she only trusts him, and then reveals that she is pregnant–the first pregnancy in the world in 18 years. Luke is elected as the new leader of the Fishes, and Theo overhears that his first act will be to kill Theo and keep the baby for political purposes. Theo grabs Kee and Miriam, who is her midwife and takes off in the night.

Theo heads for Jasper’s in order to figure out how to get Kee safely onboard the Tomorrow, a boat run by the Human Project–which is a group of scientists working to reverse the sterility of the population. Jasper thinks their best bet is to break into the Fugee community at Bexhill and use a rowboat to meet with the Tomorrow. Jasper puts them in touch with Syd (Peter Mullan), a guard at Bexhill who will help them break in. Just after Theo leaves, Luke and the other Fishes discover the house and kill Jasper while attempting to get information.

Entering the refugee camp Kee’s water breaks, but they manage to hide it from the guards. Miriam is separated from the group and Theo finds their contact, Marichka (Oana Pellea), who helps them find a room and will lead them to the boat the next day. That evening Theo helps deliver the miracle baby. The next morning Syd comes back for them, knowing they are wanted individuals and believing them to be worth the reward. Theo manages to stop Syd, but Luke and the Fishes arrive and grab Kee and the baby. The militant group is in the process of freeing refugees and fighting the military. Theo follows them into an apartment building where he manages to find Kee, but is shot by Luke in the process.

Theo and Kee make their way down the stairs by revealing the baby which causes both the Fishes and the military to stop their fighting in awe of the miracle. The battle resumes shortly after the two of them make it out of the building. Marichka finds them and leads them to a small rowboat, which they use to drift out into the foggy channel. Theo reveals he’s been shot and shows Kee how to burp the baby–which she has named Dylan, after Theo’s young son who was killed by the flu epidemic many years ago. Theo dies just as the Tomorrow arrives and takes Kee on board. The credits begin to roll to the sound of children laughing and playing.

“You see, Theo’s faith lost out to chance. So, why bother if life’s going to make its own choices?” – Jasper

History in the Making

Children of Men is an important film about society and social issues, but mainly it’s a film about hope. It was the sixth film from Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón and his fourth English language film after Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This was his first, but not last, science-fiction film, and was based on a 1992 novel of the same name by English writer P.D. James. Cuarón’s film is similar in plot to the novel, but as an adaptation takes many liberties with the actions of the characters as well as the overall theme of the story.

The film was not the first feature for any of its talented cast. Clive Owen had been a recognized face since the beginning of the decade/century/millennium with his role as The Driver in BMW’s The Hire web series, along with his appearances in The Bourne Identity and Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur. Julianne Moore had been acting for over a decade, starring in several sci-fi films including The Lost World: Jurassic Park and the sci-fi/comedy Evolution, but was probably better known for her roles in Boogie Nights or The Big Lebowski. Michael Caine was no stranger to audiences either, celebrating 50 years of filmwork when Children of Men was released. Both he and Chiwetel Ejiofor had appeared in recent sci-fi films reviewed here, The Prestige and Serenity, respectively.

Genre-fication

Children of Men is one of the best sci-fi films depicting the oppressive, dystopian future that may be in store for humanity. As a dystopian film, which has strong themes about social issues, Children of Men follows a long line of other great “what if” films. These include Fahrenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange, and The Handmaid’s Tale (all coincidentally based on popular novels as well). These films all deal with societal issues that still persist to this day: censorship, criminal rehabilitation, and the rights of women. Yet the dystopia of this film feels even more dangerous and oppressive.

Right off the bat, the film opens with an explosion in a coffee shop, which happened to be filmed just two weeks after the 7/7 London bombings–and was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Disgruntled people throw stones and debris at the train Theo takes indicating that there is some definite civil unrest happening in London. When he reaches the train station, there are people housed in cages and a larger militaristic police presence. A tension runs throughout the film as refugees are stopped, searched, and corralled which lends an authoritarian air to the story–giving a feel of stories like 1984 and Brazil. The dystopia plays out with battles occurring between the Fishes and the military in residential blocks and streets giving London more of a feel of a war zone, than that of the famous city that it is. This unrest is perhaps more unnerving today than it was 18 years ago, given recent political changes.

Societal Commentary

Children of Men doesn’t dally around with its story or themes. It gets right into both, putting Theo on the path to help move Kee (who also happens to be a refugee) to safety. Though never mentioned explicitly in the film, the story is about hope. Hope for the future and a better tomorrow. Theo’s journey is both a physical journey as well as a journey from despair to optimism. The whole society is in flux due to the inability of women to get pregnant. People know that there’s no future for the human race. Suicide kits, called Quietus, are a popular (and advertised) commodity for citizens wishing to choose their own way of dying. Theo not only feels the hopelessness of the society but also his own inability to live with the death of his young boy over a decade prior. Having lost his child shortly before the world experienced the infertility bloom connects his private emotional stress with that of the society as a whole.

In retelling the story of Theo’s loss, Jasper explains the mythical battle between faith and chance. He explains how Theo and Julian met by chance, but because of their faith as protestors at a rally, they were joined together. This faith was tested, keeping them together. But again chance intervened and yielded their son, Dylan. Then chance took him away from them due to a flu pandemic in 2008. By the time of the film, Theo has fully lost any faith in humanity or causes–working as a drone at one of the government ministries. Again, it’s only chance that saves him from the bombing at the coffee shop and chance that puts him in a place to help Kee escape from the city. However, it’s his faith that this baby may change the world that keeps him going. Kee’s baby is also something that occurred by chance, but perhaps due to the faith of some. There are a lot of religious implications in the story, likening her to Mary and her baby to Jesus. She even jokes at one point that there was no father, cheeky monkey! She has faith that she will have the baby and survive but doesn’t conceive of how the world might react to them.

Whatever the viewer’s opinion about faith or chance, Cuarón firmly believes that children are society’s burgeoning hope. Miriam states that explicitly as they are waiting for Syd to take them into Bexhill. She says that it’s “very odd what happens in a world without children’s voices.” That’s when the despair sets in as society begins to question its own mortality. After young Dylan is born, a glimpse of the baby or overhearing its cries is enough to silence the war between men. Soldiers stand agape, unbelieving of what they see. But once the baby is removed from their sight, the fighting resumes. There’s no question that the importance of Kee’s baby is paramount to the world, bringing a smidgeon of hope along with it. Theo dies knowing that he has helped move the human race closer to a solution as indicated by the closing credits which feature sounds of children laughing and playing. However, some viewers may recall the opening moments as “baby” Diego was murdered for refusing to sign an autograph and ask “What sort of world will baby Dylan find as he grows up?”

The Science in The Fiction

The film makes no attempt to explain the mystery of human infertility. All that is revealed is that 18 years prior to the film, the last baby was born. Miriam relates that, as a midwife, she experienced the uptick of miscarriages and the lack of any new pregnancies showing up in their schedules. Was it some kind of biblical plague set upon mankind by God? Or perhaps a bio-engineered disease run amok? Perhaps it was punishment for men trying to inflect their rule over women’s bodies. However, it isn’t important to the plot of the film, and revealing an answer would probably create more questions than answers. It’s reminiscent of the comic book series (and later television show) Y The Last Man. In that story, all male mammals drop dead at the exact same time, except for the main protagonist Yorick, and his male capuchin monkey. No answers were given there either, but many ideas were hypothesized. Children of Men does indicate that getting Kee and her baby to the Human Project scientists will allow humanity to at least have an attempt at restarting the species once again.

The Final Frontier

Cuarón’s directorial artistry is on display in this film. Not only is the majority of the film shot documentary style, but he also creates three oners that are absolutely incredible. For those unaware, a oner is a single shot that lasts much longer than a normal shot–often minutes long–and usually includes the character and camera traveling between locations. Examples of famous oners include the Hitchcock film Rope (it’s basically one continuous shot), the entrance to the Copacabana club in Goodfellas, and the hallway fight in Oldboy (or Daredevil season 1). Some films do use a single take, but with advancements in visual effects, the ability to hide edits becomes even better. This film contains three of these shots, in the most incredible of circumstances. The opening, which has a 55-second shot of Theo leaving the shop that gets bombed seems longer than it is, because of the distance covered. But the full list of oners includes the ambush of the car on a country road (4:07)–which places the camera in the middle of a moving car that holds five people and drives forward and reverses while avoiding armed citizens, Kee giving birth to her baby (3:19), and a third act sequence with Theo trying to find Kee while avoiding armed insurrectionists in the street (7:34). It’s only minutes into these sequences that viewer realizes there has not been a cut. Supposedly the final battle scene took multiple hours to reset if they needed to make a second run at the shot.

Many may be unaware, as I was, that the title of the film comes from a bible verse, Psalm 90. “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.” Men, in this case, being the archaic term for humanity. The verse is about the power of God to destroy humanity and also recreate it as He sees fit. In the biblical sense, humanity is not in control of its destiny, but at the whim of its creator. The film can be seen with this sort of religious bent, but also as the outcome of chance–as mentioned earlier. God may not play dice with the universe, but Children of Men is certainly open to that interpretation.

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