Strong Recommendation #2: Children of Men
Hard on the heels of my DVD experience with Code 46 I made a rare visit to a matinée movie to see the equally stunning Children of Men. Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón does an impressive job of capturing a down-at-heel Britain some twenty years from now.
It’s impossible to comment on the movie without using the cliche that this is a dystopian portrait of a future when things have, as they say back home, gone seriously pear-shaped for society. Women have been infertile for two decades, the last baby alive has just died. The hero, Clive Owen, increasingly unshaven as the film progresses, battles the forces of a totalitarian State as he seeks to rescue a solitary pregnant woman from the chaos of the gangs of militia, freedom fighters and forces of Homeland Security (sic) who pursue them.
One highlight of the film for me was seeing my favorite actor, Michael Cain, as a backwoodsy pot-smokin’ oldster who bore more than a passing resemblance to Roy Harper.
See what I mean?
See images of Abu Ghraib in Bexhill-on-Sea (the interment camp for illegal immigrants where men and women are dehumanized, caged, shrouded and spreadeagled).
See Bosnia, Baghdad and Beirut re-enacted in the streets of London where freedom fighters battle stormtroopers in the bombed out shells of empty shopping centers; commuting home involves running a gauntlet of stone throwing mobs and the ever-present round-up of illegals reminds you that you are lucky to be on the inside, if only of a dying society with all hope washed out.
See echo’s of the 1973 Sci-Fi drama Soylent Green in the advertisements for voluntary euthanasia via the suicide pill Quietus.
See a rather too obvious re-enactment of Christ’s birth in the manger as the redemption child is born in a manger while mad gypsy women bar the door and battles rage outside.
See cultures clash as the reality of different times and different places are imposed on familiar settings.
Highly recommended.
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