Children of Men Totally Explained

Everything about Children Of Men totally explained

Children of Men is a 2006 dystopian science fiction film co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. It was loosely adapted from P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men by Cuarón and Timothy J. Sexton with help from David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. It stars Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Caine.
Set in the United Kingdom of 2027, the film explores a grim world in which two decades of global human infertility have left humanity with less than a century to survive. Societal collapse, terrorism, and environmental destruction accompany the impending extinction. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom — perhaps the last functioning government — persecutes a seemingly endless wave of illegal immigrant refugees seeking sanctuary. In the midst of this chaos, Theo Faron (Clive Owen) must find safe transit for Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a pregnant African refugee. He distracts himself from thinking about the impending extinction of humanity with a bottle of Scotch whisky he keeps in the pocket of his jacket. Cast in April 2005, Owen spent several weeks collaborating with Cuarón and Sexton about his role. Impressed by Owen's creative insights, Cuarón and Sexton brought him on board as a writer. Back-story developing Theo's character was removed during the editing process: a scene showing Theo stealing petrol vouchers from work was cut to emphasize visual over verbal information. "Clive was a big help," Cuarón told Variety. "I would send a group of scenes to him, and then I'd hear his feedback and instincts."

Julianne Moore as Julian Taylor, a political activist and leader of the militant "Fishes" group. Julian is also Theo's former wife and mother to Theo's deceased child. For Julian, Cuarón wanted an actor who had the "credibility of leadership, intelligence, [and] independence". "She is just so much fun to work with," Cuarón told Cinematical. "She is just pulling the rug out from under your feet all the time. You don't know where to stand, because she's going to make fun of you." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune notices an apparent homage to Schwartz (Mort Mills) in Orson Welles' film noir, Touch of Evil (1958). Jasper calls Theo "amigo" -- just as Schwartz referred to Ramon Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston). "The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We're putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that."

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Luke, the replacement leader of the resistance movement.

Themes

Hope

Children of Men explores the themes of hope and faith in the face of overwhelming futility and despair. The film's source, the novel The Children of Men by P. D. James, describes what happens when society is unable to reproduce, using male infertility to explain this problem. In the novel, it's made clear that hope depends on future generations. James writes, "It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all too soon, the very words 'justice,' 'compassion,' 'society,’ 'struggle,' 'evil,' would be unheard echoes on an empty air."
   The film switches the infertility from male to female This unanswered question (and others in the film) have been attributed to Cuarón's dislike for expository film: "There's a kind of cinema I detest, which is a cinema that's about exposition and explanations.... It's become now what I call a medium for lazy readers.... Cinema is a hostage of narrative. And I'm very good at narrative as a hostage of cinema." Cuaron's disdain for back-story and exposition led him to use the concept of female infertility as a "metaphor for the fading sense of hope".
   Rowin, along with film critics Jason Guerrasio and Ethan Alter, observe the film's underlying touchstone of immigration; Alter notes that the film "makes a potent case against the anti-immigrant sentiment" popular in modern societies like the United Kingdom, and the United States, with Guerrasio describing the film as "a complex meditation on the politics of today". Visually, the refugee camps in the film intentionally evoke Abu Ghraib prison, Guantánamo Bay detainment camp, and The Maze. Other popular images appear, such as a prisoner in a pose resembling the photograph of Satar Jabar in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, and a sign over the refugee camp reading "Homeland Security". The similarity between the hellish, cinéma vérité stylized battle scenes of the film and current news and documentary coverage of the Iraq War, is noted by film critic Manohla Dargis, describing Cuarón's fictional landscapes as "war zones of extraordinary plausibility".
   In the film, refugees are "hunted down like cockroaches," rounded up and put into cages and camps, and even shot, leading film critics like Chris Smith and Claudia Puig to observe symbolic "overtones" and images of The Holocaust. and in the scene where British Homeland Security strips and beats illegal immigrants, a song by The Libertines, "Arbeit Macht Frei", plays in the background. "The visual allusions to the Nazi roundups are unnerving," writes Richard A. Blake. "It shows what people can become when the government orchestrates their fears for its own advantage."
   Cuarón explains how he uses this imagery to propagate the theme by cross-referencing fictional and futuristic events with real, contemporary, or historical incidents and beliefs:
Christian symbolism; for example, British terrorists named "Fishes" protect the rights of refugees. Opening on Christmas Day in the United States, critics compared the characters of Theo and Kee with Joseph and Mary, calling the film a "modern-day Nativity story": Kee's pregnancy is revealed to Theo in a barn, alluding to the manger of the Nativity scene, and when other characters discover Kee and her baby, they respond with "Jesus Christ" or the sign of the cross.
   To highlight these spiritual themes, Cuarón commissioned a 15-minute piece by British composer John Tavener, an Orthodox Christian whose work resonates with the themes of "motherhood, birth, rebirth, and redemption in the eyes of God." Calling his score a "musical and spiritual reaction to Alfonso's film", snippets of Tavener's "Fragments of a Prayer" contain lyrics in Latin, German and Sanskrit sung by a mezzo-soprano. Words like "mata" (mother), "pahi mam" (protect me), "avatara" (saviour), and "alleluia" appear throughout the film.

The Road

Children of Men is considered a road film. Social and political commentary and rebellion are two themes that are characteristic of road films and both can be seen in Children of Men.
   The international infertility epidemic and subsequent downfall of every country except England is introduced within the first couple of minutes of the film, thanks to a voice-over news broadcast. Because news reports are generally considered objective explanations of what is going on in the world, they provide a nice interlude to the commentary the film makes about society and politics in this fictional world.
   Brian Ireland argues that crossing cultural boundaries in road films is a “reflection of the wider cultural context in which the movie... is placed”. In the first scene of the film, Theo gets coffee in a cafe where all the patrons are glued to the news on the television about the youngest person on earth having been killed. As soon as he leaves, a bomb goes off in the cafe. Shortly after the bomb goes off, Theo drives to visit Jasper, his mentor and good friend. Jasper suggests that it was the government that blew up the coffee shop and then expresses his sentiments for all of the immigrants that are flocking to England because of the state of their own countries. Once the audience receives the objective information from the newscasts about the state of the world and culture within the movie, the film immediately responds with commentary about how the government is managing the crisis.
   According to David Laderman, author of Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, rebellion is the, “engine driving the genre” There are three strong rebel forces in the film. Theo’s friend and mentor, Jasper, is an aging hippie, ex-political cartoonist who now lives off the grid and illegally sells marijuana to government workers. The Fishes are a rebel group planning a violent uprising against the government. Finally, Theo himself, along with Kee, are the ultimate rebels in the film because they go against not only the government, but the Fishes as well.

Production

The adaptation of the P. D. James novel was originally written by Paul Chart, and later rewritten by Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby. Developed by producers Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, Hilary Shor and Tony Smith, Beacon Pictures brought director Alfonso Cuarón on board in 2001. Cuarón and screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton began rewriting the script after the director completed Y tu mamá también (2001). Afraid he'd "start second guessing things" Cuarón used the film The Battle of Algiers (1967) as a model for social reconstruction in preparation for production, presenting the film to Clive Owen as an example of his vision for Children of Men. In order to create a philosophical and social framework for the film, the director read literature by Slavoj Žižek, as well as similar works. The film Sunrise (1927) was also influential. Due to these circumstances, the opening terrorist attack scene on Fleet Street was shot one-and-a-half months after the London bombing. Cuarón added a pig balloon to the scene as homage to Pink Floyd's Animals. Other art works visible in this scene include Michaelangelo's David, and Banksy's British Cops Kissing. Billboards were designed to balance a contemporary and futuristic appearance as well as easily visualizing what else was occurring in the rest of the world at the time, and cars were made to resemble modern ones at first glance, although a closer look made them seem unfamiliar. Cuarón informed the art department that the film was the "anti-Blade Runner", rejecting technologically advanced proposals and downplaying the science fiction elements of the 2027 setting. The director focused on images reflecting the contemporary period, choosing to have innovative technology in the film's timeline discontinued by 2014. With the future in mind, Cuarón maintained a steady gaze on the present: "We didn't want to be distracted by the future. We didn't want to transport the audience into another reality."

Single-shot sequences

Children of Men used several lengthy single-shot sequences in which extremely complex actions take place. The longest of these are a shot in which Kee gives birth (199 seconds); a roadside ambush on a country road (247 seconds); and a scene in which Theo is captured by the Fishes, escapes, and runs down a street and through a building in the middle of a raging battle (454 seconds). These sequences were extremely difficult to film, although the effect of continuity is sometimes an illusion, aided by CGI effects.
   Cuarón had already experimented with long takes in Y tu mamá también and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. His style is influenced by the Swiss film Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), a favorite of Cuarón's. Cuarón reminisces: "I was studying cinema when I first saw [Jonah], and interested in the French New Wave. Jonah was so unflashy compared to those films. The camera keeps a certain distance and there are relatively few close-ups. It's elegant and flowing, constantly tracking, but very slowly and not calling attention to itself."
   The creation of the single-shot sequences was a challenging, time-consuming process that sparked concerns from the studio. It took fourteen days to prepare for the single take in which Clive Owen's character searches a building under attack, and five hours for every time they wanted to reshoot it. In the middle of the shot that appears in the film blood splattered onto the lens, which cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki convinced the director to leave in. According to Owen, "Right in the thick of it are me and the camera operator because we're doing this very complicated, very specific dance which, when we come to shoot, we've to make feel completely random."
   Cuarón's initial idea for maintaining continuity during the roadside ambush scene was dismissed by production experts as an "impossible shot to do". Fresh from the visual effects-laden Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuarón suggested using computer-generated imagery to film the scene. Lubezki refused to allow it, reminding the director that they'd intended to make a film akin to a "raw documentary". Instead, a special camera rig invented by Gary Thieltges of Doggicam Systems was employed, allowing Cuarón to develop the scene as one extended take. A vehicle was modified to enable seats to tilt and lower actors out of the way of the camera, and the windshield was designed to tilt out of the way to allow camera movement in and out through the front windscreen. A crew of four, including the DP and camera operator, rode on the roof.
   However, the commonly reported statement that the action scenes are continuous shots isn't entirely true. Visual effects supervisor Frazer Churchill has indicated that the battle sequence was filmed in five separate takes over two locations and then seamlessly stitched together to give the illusion of a single take. Similarly, the car sequence was filmed in six separate takes over three locations and then stitched together, along with various other CG elements including a CG roof.

Sound

Cuarón uses sound and music to bring the fictional world of social unrest and infertility to life. A creative yet restrained combination of rock, pop, hip-hop and classical music replace the typical film score. Two political songs, John Lennon's "anti-nationalist rant" "Bring on the Lucie (Freeda Peeple)" and Jarvis Cocker's "Running the World", close out the film. On September 22, 2006, Children of Men debuted at #1 in the United Kingdom with $2.4 million in 368 screens. The film debuted in a limited release in the United States on December 22, 2006 in 16 theaters, expanding the number of theaters to over 1,200 on January 5, 2007. As of February 6, 2008, Children of Men grossed $69,612,678 worldwide, with $35,552,383 of the revenue generated in the United States.

Critical reception

According to the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes, Children of Men received a 92% overall approval out of 190 reviews from critics, and on Metacritic, the film has a rating of 84 based on 36 reviews. Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine called the film "the herald of another blessed event: the arrival of a great director by the name of Alfonso Cuarón." Stevens hailed the film's extended car chase and battle scenes as "two of the most virtuoso single-shot chase sequences I've ever seen." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called the film a "superbly directed political thriller", raining accolades on the long chase scenes. On their list of the best movies of 2006, AV Club, the San Francisco Chronicle, Slate Magazine and The Washington Post placed the film at number-one.

Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2006.

1st - Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

1st - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

1st - Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club

1st - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

1st - Tasha Robinson, The A.V. Club

2nd - Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter

2nd - Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club

3rd - Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times

4th - Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

4th - Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

4th - Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe

5th - Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald

6th - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

7th - Empire

7th - Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

7th - Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

8th - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times (tied with Pan's Labyrinth)

8th - Scott Foundas, LA Weekly (tied with L'Enfant (The Child))

8th - Scott Foundas, The Village Voice General top ten

Dana Stevens, Slate

Liam Lacey and Rick Groen, The Globe and Mail

Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor

Mark Kermode, BBC Radio 5 Live

Awards

P. D. James and the screenwriters of Children of Men were awarded the 19th annual USC Scripter Award for the screen adaptation of the novel; Howard Rodman, chair of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Writing Division, described the book-to-screen adaptation as "writing and screen writing of the highest order." The film was also nominated in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards. Children of Men also obtained Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki) and Best Film Editing (Alfonso Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez). The British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominated Children of Men for Best Visual Effects and honored the film with awards for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design at the 60th British Academy Film Awards. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won the feature film award for Best Cinematography at the 21st American Society of Cinematographers Awards. The Australian Cinematographers Society also awarded Lubezki the 2007 International Award for Cinematography for Children of Men.
The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films bestowed the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film on Children of Men, and it received the nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention.

DVD

The DVD was released in Europe on January 15, 2007 and in the United States on March 27, 2007. Extras include a half-hour documentary by director Alfonso Cuarón entitled "The Possibility of Hope". The documentary explores the intersection between the film's themes and reality with a critical analysis by eminent scholars: the Slovenian sociologist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein, futurist James Lovelock, sociologist Saskia Sassen, human geographer Fabrizio Eva, cultural theorist Tzvetan Todorov, and philosopher and economist John N. Gray; "Under Attack" features a demonstration of the innovative techniques required for the car chase and battle scenes; Clive Owen and Julianne Moore discuss their characters in "Theo & Julian"; "Futuristic Design" opens the door on the production design and look of the film; "Visual Effects" shows how the digital baby was created. Deleted scenes are included. The film is also available in a HD DVD/DVD combo package and, in Scandinavian countries, as an all-region Blu-Ray disc.

Notes and references

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