Every couple of months or so, my husband and I play a game called Movie Heaven & Movie Hell- in which we each pick 7 movies we’d love to watch, and 7 films we think will be terrible, then flip a coin to decide which one we’re watching. Yesterday, it was between my ‘Heaven’ choice of Children of Men and his ‘Hell’ choice of (shudder) Transformers 3.
Tonight’s flip was tense, ladies and gents. Really, really tense. Children of Men had been recommended by people whose taste in movies we had a lot of respect for, and I love a sci-fi dystopia like Pete Doherty likes crack. Also, seeing as Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen depressed him for weeks, I really didn’t want Colin to have to endure Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon. If he hears his childhood hero Optimus Prime refer to ‘punk ass Decepticons’ again he will have a nervous breakdown and I’ll have to live with that. But we were lucky, for the second night in a row, which means there must be an epic fail right around the corner. Children of Men it is.
Allow me to set the scene- it’s 2027 and those butt-munches over at the Child-free Livejournals have had all their wildest dreams come true. Global female infertility means no children (sorry, ”screaming crotch-droppings”) are conceived for nearly two decades. Almost every country has fallen into anarchy and the youngest person on Earth has just been stabbed to death.
Britain, whilst ostensibly still functioning, is a police state. Enter our hero, office drone Theo (Clive Owen), who’s paid by his freedom fighter/terrorist ex-wife (Julianne Moore) to escort a pregnant refugee out of the country and to safety. Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) is the first woman in the world to have a viable pregnancy in 18 years. She and her miracle baby would become political pawns to be fought over by the terrorists and the totalitarian state unless she leaves and joins a group of scientists called the Human Project, who are looking for the cure to infertility.
The near-future UK portrayed in Children of Men is perfectly realised and believable- there are subtle differences to the present, but no grand leaps in technology. For example, people have slightly cooler computers and there are more tuktuks and electric cars due to petrol shortages. There’s also a lot more graffiti, and mean-looking riot cops on every street corner. Basically it’s like the present, except a bit shittier.
It’s not exactly as oppressive as 1984, but the government are working really hard to rival it. Adverts play on London buses urging people to grass up all illegal immigrants to the police, even if they’re members of the family. Refugees like Kee are rounded up herded into pens and sent to Bexhill-on-sea- now a highly fortified concentration camp (it’s also number 8 in the 2003 Top 10 Crap Towns, fact fans). They’re then treated with the level humanity and respect you’d imagine- the scenes in which Kee, Theo and a white person with dreadlocks (Pam Ferris) get bussed into the squalid camp are deliberately reminiscent of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay.
For the non-foreigners inhabiting this grey unpleasant land, the government helpfully hands out euthanasia kits, so if the grinding despair of a miserable society without hope of a future gets a bit too much, you can quietly end it all in the comfort of your home. I see that as progress, although the temptation to use the suicide drugs during re-runs of My Super-Sweet Sixteen would be overwhelming. But if they screened that during the preggo crisis of 2027 people would suddenly remember that children occasionally turn into spoiled, over-entitled, shit-for-brained teenagers, and they wouldn’t feel so bad about not having them around anymore. Cloud, silver lining etc.
Shot on hand-held cameras, Children of Men looks like gritty newsreel footage from the heart of a genuine conflict zone, complete with long single shots and occasionally, blood on the lens. This adds to the believability of what you’re seeing, particularly in the climactic battles in Bexhill (which looks like it’s twinned with Beirut). The camera follows Clive Owen through shattered public buildings and derelict trains while terrified people cower and wail in their native languages as tanks shell them into oblivion. Much like authentic news footage, the camera never lingers on the atrocities, instead catching them in passing- women weeping over the corpses of their husbands, men with half a leg blown off. It’s powerful and compelling stuff, especially when there’s a young woman and the only baby in the entire world caught in the middle of it.
However, despite being exciting and brilliantly shot, Children of Men does have flaws. One major drag factor was the stars. Clive Owen is the cinematic equivalent of cheap white sliced bread that tastes of nothing- lots of people like it well enough but it’s ultimately unfulfilling, and you’d never choose it over a nice crusty loaf fresh out of the oven. Bread analogies aside, he was acted out of nearly every frame by the triple threat of Clare-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Caine (who seemed to be having the time of his life playing old hippie and weed connoisseur Jasper).
Casting glossy Julianne Moore as leader of a gang of crusties was also an error. Her costume may as well have been a sandwich board bearing the legend ‘PLEASE WATCH THIS FILM, AMERICA’. I wasn’t convinced at all by her as the head of a terrorist cell, and her character’s relationship with Owen’s was trite, clichéd and annoying. But, her appearance is brief and the talented supporting cast means the film avoids being dubbed ‘Children of Meh’.
The other major flaw was that, despite having a great premise, the plot of Children of Men was sadly a little patronising, and as the film ended it felt like a wasted opportunity in some respects. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot in Children of Men I enjoyed, but it could have been so, so much better.
Imagine, instead of the grating ‘white hero saves the poor pregnant African’ angle, the story was from Kee’s perspective. That would’ve been awesome as opposed to just enjoyable. She’s literally the saviour of the human race so it would’ve been appropriate to see events unfolding through her eyes, maybe going back to the point she realised she was pregnant. But as established industry wisdom is that films starring black women don’t put bums on seats, we ended up with another everyman played by Box Office wallpaper. Thanks a bunch, Hollywood!
Up next for Movie Heaven & Movie Hell, acclaimed Brazilian drama City of God is going toe-to-toe with Fast Five (according to Wikipedia, the fifth Fast and the Furious film, not a command for a late 90s boy band to starve themselves. Thanks, I’ll be here all week, try the veal etc).
Which will we watch? Well it all depends on the turn of a coin…
