The cold sci fi heart of Children of Men
Children of Men suffers the same disorder as that over-hyped gangster drama you might remember from 2002, Road to Perdition: a meticulously directed genre movie that nails an aesthetic all its own but has almost no soul. There was awe for Road to Perdition’s austere cinematography that feels more than vaguely familiar in the raves for Children of Men’s stunning long shots, a fanboy’s respect that Roger Ebert summed up in his Perdition review by saying, “I knew I admired it, but I didn’t know if I liked it. I am still not sure. It is cold and holds us outside.”
Children of Men is very cold, and keeps the audience’s empathy at arm’s length. Sadly, it’s a problem the impressively orchestrated action sequences only seem to compound. They are efficient and brutal but rarely consider the thoughts and feelings of characters. During the incredible car sequence, the camera never cuts, as if afraid to flinch away from the action (a slowly shattering windshield, hands pressed violently against the vehicle) and pause to consider the meaning of the moment. They are marvels of technical achievement but walls in the film’s emotional rhythm. Ultimately, the move works better as a showpiece than a piece of art.
Alfonso Cuarón showed more emotional depth in Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban, which not only looked cool but also did justice to the out-of-control sexual frustration buzzing in students at J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts. It’s hard to tell if anything is buzzing in the inhabitants of Cuarón’s near-future wasteland where “women can’t make babies” and immigrants are trapped in cages. Which is partly the point, but Children of Men wallows in its own dystopian bleakness, crafting unforgettable motifs—a huge floating pig, a misty seascape—but without the humanity that justified Steven Spielberg’s equally stylized end-of-the-world exploit A.I.
The confused script does nothing to help fill Cuarón’s emptiness, offering a view of a world in decline that is alternatively gloomy, indifferent and gushingly idealistic. Clive Owen wades through the first half hour detached from the world around him, not even hinting at a traumatic back story that later struggles to become believable character development. Events pick up momentum when he’s partnered up with a pregnant girl who could be mankind’s rebound, but the sudden burst of hopeful rebirth in the last act feels staggeringly out-of-place, another trick in Cuarón’s hat that doesn’t flow with this strangely unfeeling film. Children of Men looks great and knows it, but it’s a chic shell of a sci-fi.
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Agreed, for the most part. It was an engrossing, well-made film, but left me feeling unsatisfied. Seemed more interested with rushing its characters through a hysterical vision of current events taken to their logical extremes rather than stopping to think about what it all really means.
Spencer Kornhaber
January 10, 2007 at 1:50 am
No way…I thought it was amazing. Best movie I’ve seen for quite a while. I thought the emotional distance was more than appropriate- a great reflection of the British psyche of stoicism. “The rest of the world collapses, only Britain marches on.” It has an 84 on metacritic and a 91 on Rotten Tomatoes- the general consensus is that it rocked.
Christian
January 10, 2007 at 10:57 am
This must be one of those films that divides its audience in half, into those who were moved by it, and those who weren’t. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about when you refer to this film as emotionally distant and cold. If there was a more emotionally honest and affecting film that year, I certainly don’t remember it at all. What I do remember is how frighteningly plausible this vision of a nightmarish future was, the way Cuaron’s camera picks up action as if it developed organically out of this stunningly corporeal environment. Particularly that moment where everything stops as the sound of a baby’s cries somehow pierce the din of gunfire and explosions and enemies and friends alike allow the group to pass untouched; a sincerity of vision that truly understands what a world without children could be like, and how awe-inspiring the idea of new life can be in such a place, and how unfortunately fleeting the moment may be. I can’t remember when a miracle on film moved me as much as this, save for Ordet, and that is saying a LOT. Seriously, what movie were you watching?
Samir
April 23, 2008 at 7:53 pm