A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Children of Men

Date Viewed: 12/28/06

Details:

Clive Owen

Julianne Moore

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Claire-Hope Ashitey

Michael Caine

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

Score: 0

The Review: P.D. James' 1993 novel (crossover science-fiction) was both incredibly well-written and simultaneously incredibly depressing. I have an attraction for dystopian work, but even for me, this was on the edge of readable. Now imagine what it's like when you no longer have wonderful writing to pay attention to -- only the story and its cinematic rendering: it's incredibly, unremittingly bleak.

This is a dark, violent dystopic nightmare of 2027, 18 years after the birth of the last human child. Humanity has become infertile, and is impotently lashing out in response, in every direction. Britain is on a war footing, homeland security is rounding up non-citizen refugees, multiple factions are in armed rebellion, and terrorist attacks are a daily fact of life..., such as it is. Euthanasia and suicide are promoted as attractive options; after all, everything will be over in 50 years: "will the last person in London shut out the lights?" Then, as if from Handel: for, unto us, a child is born.

The tone of the film is well-matched by the score assembled from the dark side of John Tavener (using "The Protecting Veil," and other material crafted specially for the film), and repeated strains of Krzysztof Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima." The latter has surprising assonance to Dawn Upshaw's solos from Henryk Gorecki's "Third Symphony," used long ago to good effect to establish mood in Peter Weir's 1993 Fearless.

Not a bad film, but it shows little of redemption, hope or tolerance. Although perhaps not quite as well-written, an earlier (1974) mainstream science-fiction novel by Richard Cowper that postulates something similar with human fertility (The Twilight of Briareus), at least offers a more fertile imagination, a much more interesting plot, and a bit more hope. Perhaps most disturbing is this: given the state of the world at the dawn of 2007, its vision of 2027, a mere twenty years to the future, doesn't seem like much of a stretch. It's hard to imagine that P.D. James wrote her novel "way back" in 1993, with an incredible prescience.

(28-Dec-06)

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