SomeAngryIndian

It’s difficult to write this one up because it’s had a very limited release which I know most everyone can’t catch. The only other human being I know that has seen this is the guy who saw it with me. I don’t mean for this review to end up half-baked. I think I’ll go over it again once the DVD is released here in the States and more people have seen it. On that note:

What drew me to the film is how English it was going to be. Of course it starts in London. It has Clive Owen and Michael Caine in it, so the quality of acting is most assured. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was notable is Dirty Pretty Things and Serenity, also gave a strong performance. Julianne Moore proves she’s a professional again, though she is underused as more of a tool for exposing the protagonist’s (played by Clive Owen) past.

A Radiohead song is in this film. And Crimson King. Nice touch. The cover of Ruby Tuesday was in my head for a few hours, I must confess. The rest of the sound in the movie is standard but done alarmingly well. There are a lot of gun battles and a few explosions that sounded massive and pretty akin to Saving Private Ryan. But the sound editors’ big achievements come out during the sneaking scenes, when voices fade in and out while Clive Owen attempts not to be seen. Sounds silly, but on a 5.1 system it sounded marvelous and engrossing, which is very necessary for a film of its kind.

This movie reeks of tension. It opens in a dystopian future where current headlines (terrorism, immigration) have become all-pervading truths. Things do not look so bleek in the very, very beginning. But one crucial scene (right before the title screen) sets a grim tone. From then on, I expected things to go batshit at any given moment.

I told my friend this as my first impression of the film and I think it is still valid. The ideas set forth by this film are similar to those of V for Vendetta. However, all the complaints I had with V cannot be found here.

See, V was a comic book hero movie. That’s fine. Bravado, action, explosions, and blood are all to be expected. But I felt that in its transition from comics to film, it lost its heart and humanity. It’s not even that the film wasn’t like the comic. What frustrated me was a very important scene involving the Larkham Asylum that was missing. Larkham was there, but it was glossed over. The police officer’s trip through the remains of the building was gone. And with it, half the voices of England were gone.

The real oppressed in a fascist takeover aren’t the idle survivors, it’s the people that died in the process. In V, these people acted too late and so I’ve no sympathy for their movement. V takes place after the comfortable white people let all the blacks, homosexuals, jews, hindus, asians, and muslims die in exchange for their smug sense of security. The Larkham trip in the book let the dead speak. The movement had to become a voice for them too. In the film, they were conveniently put offscreen. The white middle class still fought for itself.

Children of Men takes place before that transition. Refugees are being jailed and taken to camps. Like in V, the protagonist fights apathy, mostly within himself. But it’s an internal struggle to fight as well. Unlike Evie, he’s not tortured to comply. Coming from within, it seems more genuine. I also see that struggle between the two ancient Homeric archetypes. In V, we see an almost godly being (though we don’t see how he became that way, another folly of the film, since his ascension to V is crucial to how he operates and his motivation…someone stop me from shitting on this film again…), like Achilles. In Children of Men, we see a more Odyssean hero, more human, and capable of doing heroic things within that space. What Clive Owen’s character does, anyone can do. And everywhere we see ordinary human beings who don’t need gods’ hands to act in order to motivate them. In a world of extremism, I don’t see a future like V’s. It’s easy to see that there would be resistance to the dictators from the beginning. The only people that wouldn’t fight are those unaffected directly by it or that might even profit from it, like in Nazi Europe.

I won’t provide more details since I don’t want to spoil the movie for any would-be readers. The bottomline is that Children of Men is a very realistic, humane, gorgeous film that deals with extremely relevant issues through an understandable lens. Like V, it dabbles in the fantastic (every woman in the world becoming sterile is possible but not very much), but at the end of the day you have real people at the center of believable events. If one were to act against fascism it needs to be at that crucial phase, not ten years later from your television screen.

Ripe with powerful visuals (the single take long shot is the best I have ever seen) that do not self-serve but illuminate the story, real and colorful characters (Moore’s scene with the ping-pong ball, all of the brilliant Academy-Award winner Michael Caine’s scenes, Kee’s humor despite her stark reality), an excellent storyline, and a mood that effectively evokes the paranoia and tension of their bleak future, Children of Men is the kind of film I have been waiting to see all year. Real and despairing yet ultimately uplifting and done with skill. That it was my last movie in the theaters in 2006 was a sweet ending. And I can say with certainty that it was my favorite.

Note: Children of Men is getting a wide release on January 5th, 2007.

Reviews: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/children_of_men/