Children of Men

I'll start off by saying that by far, this is one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time. Admittedly I haven't watched very many movies in theaters this year but that's partly due to the fact that nothing really attracted my attention, either because of the buzz or the movie itself. And don't even get me started on last year's Oscar movies. I still think that Crash pretty much sucked. But this was the first movie since probably Serenity that I was excited to see and was still excited about afterward.

Loosely based on a novel by P.D. James, Children of Men is a dystopian view of the near future where the human race is dying out, not because of nuclear bombs or alien invasions but simply because women have become infertile. The film doesn't make any attempts to explain why, presumably because no one in this world knows either. The movie opens with a news report that the youngest person in the world has died. There have been no children born on Earth in nearly 20 years.

Britain, where the film is set, is apparently the only nation left standing in the world, with all other major governments and cities demolished by war or terrorist attacks. "Still standing" is a relative term, Britain is essentially a police state, with street bombs, armored passenger trains, and a Nazi-reminiscent rounding up of refugees from other countries, but people are still working, still getting coffee, still trying to lead normal lives.

The plot follows Theo, played by Clive Owen, as he shepherds a young woman who, amazingly, is pregnant, through the English countryside and through a war-torn refugee camp to the coast where she can be delivered to the mysterious Human Project, which is presumably a group of scientists working on the fertility problem. There's actually a lot of action and violence, all of which is filmed extraordinarily well. There's a good dose of humor too, mostly provided by Michael Caine, who plays a hippie friend of Theo's. The effect is just riveting. And despite the bleak and depressing nature of nearly everything in the movie, the ending is a hopeful one.

I'm a big fan of Alfonso Cuarón. I loved the little-watched A Little Princess, and even his odd modern-day Great Expections, and I personally thought that his Harry Potter movie was the best of the bunch so far. He's definitely a huge talent. One of his upcoming projects is a movie adaptation of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (which I reviewed here). Ordinarily I think I would be worried about this book becoming a movie, but with Cuarón at the helm I believe it'll be fantastic. I can't wait!