Children of Men [dir. Alfonso Cuaron]

I realize I'm rather late to the appreciation party for Children of Men (CoM), the Alfonso Cuaron film that was released and generated a fair buzz in 2006. There were two reasons for this: I'd read and loved PD James' source novel. When I read that the shy middle-aged academic protagonist of the story had been transformed into some kind of action hero played by Clive Owen, I was dismayed. Secondly, Clive Owen himself. I'd only seen the man in Shoot 'Em Up, a film I didn't care for at all, in which his constantly sullen presence irritated me greatly. Even though I had bagged the Arrow Video blu-ray of CoM in 2021 during one of their site sales, it took me all this while to actually sit down to watch it.

Once willing to see the film as one that takes the bones of PDJ's story but does its own thing, I found CoM quite engaging. Clive Owen is Theo Faron, a depressed alcoholic British bureaucrat in a world with a bleak future. Human females have become sterile, so there are no new children. The last born human beings are treated like royalty and it is a national tragedy when one of them is killed by an angry fan for refusing an autograph. The Britain shown here is a totalitarian regime, a cross between George Orwell's 1984 and Pink Floyd's Animals (referenced with a floating pig balloon straight from the album cover). But it is apparently still better off than other countries in the world, and therefore constantly besieged by refugees of all races, who are rounded up and sent off to camps. The memory of James' novel is very hazy now, but I think the focus on the plight of refugees is of a significantly greater concern in the film (likely an offshoot of Cuaron himself being an immigrant to the US?).

When we first meet Theo, he steps out of a coffee shop where people are glued to TV reports of the murder of a celebrity youth, only for a bomb to go off inside moments later. This act is attributed to a militant group called the Fishes. They are led by Theo's former wife Julian (Julianne Moore), who contacts Theo to arrange transit papers for a woman. Theo later discovers that the woman is a pregnant refugee Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), who Julian wants to escort to The Human Project, a secret organization working to reverse the infertility phenomenon.

Early on in this mission, Julian is killed in an attack, an audacious scene brilliantly orchestrated by Cuaron and DoP Emmanuel Lubezki. Theo helps to take Kee to the Fishes' hideout in the country, but there he realizes that instead of ferrying her to The Human Project, they plan to hold Kee hostage and use her baby as a prize to negotiate with the government. He gathers Kee and escapes, with the Fishes in hot pursuit. Theo must now protect Kee from both the militants and government forces, and escort her to her destination.

CoM is an action film, but like few others you have seen. After the initial setup in London, a good part of the film is set in the bleak, muddy English countryside, and later in a refugee camp set amidst disused partially broken down buildings. The visuals have a drained out quality to them, similar to Michael Radford's celebrated adaptation of 1984. The script is not afraid to have quiet, off-beat moments, like when Theo hangs out with his pot-smoking hippie friend Jasper (Michael Caine), a former political cartoonist with a catatonic wife. Theo is not your typical action hero, either. After the coffee shop bombing at the film's start he is thoroughly shaken. Later in the several skirmishes, he's no suave and fearless brawler, but a vulnerable man, whose best weapon is his determination to do what he thinks is right. While Julianne Moore's part is a short one, she makes a major impact and you can imagine how the spirit of Julian guides Theo in his actions further on. Michael Caine relishes the rare opportunity to do a laid-back, irreverent character (Apparently John Lennon was the inspiration for his approach).

The contribution of DoP Lubezki cannot be appreciated enough. Several of the film's key sequences are shot as long, seemingly unbroken takes, with the camera taking on the role of a mobile observer, following our characters as they make their way through intense conflict zones. The production design team's creation of a near-future dystopian Britain is also immersive.

It is remarkable that Cuaron and his team convinced Universal Studios to pump $76 million into a British dystopian adventure with a not necessarily happy ending, and no major Hollywood stars apart from Moore, who is offed very early in the film. Sadly, they were not rewarded in terms of box-office success. Still, it is a film that continues to be relevant and deserves to be revisited multiple times.

A few words on Arrow Video's blu-ray, originally released in 2018:

Arrow's transfer, based on an HD master supplied by Universal Studios, gives a strong presentation of the film, which should at least equal Universal's own disc from 2009. The deliberate decision to have a gritty documentary feel with drained out color has a major impact on how the film looks, but there appear to be no encode related anomalies, and grain pattern is tight. The 5.1 lossless DTS-HDMA sound is not as bombastic as some other tentpole films, but several action sequences, like the assault on the car and the escape run through the refugee camp under attack deliver sufficient bass oomph and surround action. Extras on the disc include an audio commentary, meaty video appreciations by noted film writers Philip Kemp and Kat Ellinger, and likely all the extras from the Universal blu (which include a half hour analysis of the film and several featurettes with the cast and crew). My 2021 copy of this 2018 didn't have the first pressing booklet (expected). The reversible cover has original poster art on the other side.