Nathan’s Movie Collection: Children of Men (2006)
“Very odd, what happens in a world without children's voices.”
Note: Most of these movies have been around for a considerable amount of time, so assume there will be spoilers all throughout. The Good Place Method of using profanity does come into effect for one part of the piece.
I think if COVID-19 revealed anything about the world1 , it’s that anything and everything can be politicized and no matter how dystopian things get, you’ll still be expected to go into the office. Unrelated, today’s movie is Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men.
2023 is the year I decided to dive headfirst into Mexican Cinema because despite growing up there, I didn’t know much about it outside of the famous names that have broken through into the American mainstream and I really wanted to fix that. When I started the year, the only names I knew from classic Mexican Cinema were María Félix and Cantinflas. Not only have deepened my appreciation for those two, I’ve also come to really love the work of actors like Dolores del Río, Pedro Armendáriz, and Arturo de Córdova. Roberto Gavaldón quickly became one of my favorite directors thanks to The Kneeling Goddess and Macario, the latter of which is at the very top of the list of all the Mexican movies I’ve watched this year2. Then there’s Gabriel Figueroa, one of the most prolific cinematographers in the history of cinema, whose name is on almost every movie I’ve seen from Mexico’s golden age.
As for modern Mexican cinema, I’ve gotten hip to folks like Luis Estrada, Alonso Ruizpalacios, and recent Ariel Award3-winner Alejandra Márquez Abella. Rodrigo Prieto and Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki (who shot today’s film) are two of the greatest cinematographers working today. But there’s a trio of filmmakers that most people outside of Mexico are aware of, especially the Academy. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro, and Alfonso Cuarón are three names I’ve been very familiar with since living in Mexico and if you ask anyone about Mexican movies, chances are these are one of the names they’ll pull. And for good reason.
Even before I watched any of their work, I was familiar with them as important Mexican celebrities that people in the States also knew about. Del Toro, in particular, who I think is probably the most well-known to general American audiences. I remember seeing him on Jimmy Kimmel promoting one of the Hellboy movies when our family was staying at a Super 8 in the middle of Nowhere, Illinois. Or Indiana. I can’t remember4. Point is, when Kimmel asked him where he was from in Mexico and Guillermo let out a “Guadalajara” with a thick Mexican accent, we all cheered. The man’s an international treasure whose imagination is unparalleled. As for Iñárritu, one day I’ll go long on why his work is annoyingly misunderstood.
But about Cuarón, my personal favorite of the three. Of the eight movies he’s made, I think he’s made four stone cold masterpieces. I definitely watched Y tu mamá también younger than I should have. The political message really landed with me when I finally realized there was one watching as an adult. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite of the Harry Potter movies and Roma is one of the better examples of an acclaimed filmmaker using all the cinematic tools they know best (including doing the cinematography himself) to tell a story from their childhood. For that, he won Best Director as well as Best Cinematography so clearly that move paid off.
Looking how selective he is with his projects and how successful they are, he’s a lot like Stanley Kubrick, another director who would pour several years into one idea and come out the other end with some of the greatest movies ever made. Listen, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Alfonso Cuarón is really good at making movies.
His other masterpiece in my opinion is Children of Men, which I didn’t watch until a few years ago and it was one of those movies that I immediately wanted to watch again. I’d avoided it because of how grim it looked, so I was surprised that I took to it the way I did. The answer is probably because it was late 2020 and entirely possible that I strongly related to images of a man walking through a dystopian wasteland to get to work. Not that I look like Clive Owen, although I’m not stopping anyone from saying so, it’s a free country.
Anyway, Clive Owen plays Theo, a former activist turned bureaucrat who’s all but given up on the world that’s falling apart around him. More to the Kubrick point, A Clockwork Orange was one of Cuarón’s reference points when creating his version of a dystopian London. Cuarón is also know for having a documentary-style approach in a lot of work, which makes some of the shots of immigrants being rounded up into pens and cages are really potent, especially watching them today.
The movie opens with what’s eventually revealed to be news footage playing in a coffee shop Theo’s in. Along with everyone else, he’s watching coverage of the death of Baby Diego, the youngest person in the world. The newscaster dryly reports that Baby Diego was stabbed to death outside a bar in Buenos Aires as a bored Theo reaches for his coffee and walks out of the shop. A few moments later, we see Theo standing outside on the sidewalk putting booze in his coffee when a bomb goes off inside the shop. Cut to:
The movie is loosely based on The Children of Men, a novel by English writer P. D. James. Another piece of information from my research assistant5: Cuarón had co-screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton read the book while Cuarón himself read an abridged version so he wouldn’t get in his own head about getting the book right. In the novel, Theo is kidnapped by a group of militants called the Five Fishes and Julian, the wife of the group’s leader, is the one with the world’s first pregnancy in years. While it still hits on some of the same themes, it’s ultimate a different story than the one Cuarón ended up telling. I’ll say one more thing about the book: as much as I love the movie, I think Alfonso missed out on showing the fictional London trend of people having elaborate christening ceremonies for newborn pets.
In Cuarón’s version, the Fishes are a militant immigrant-rights group led by Julian (Julianne Moore). She and her ex-husband Theo (Clive Owen) were both activists and we find out through the smallest bits of exposition that their marriage fell apart after the death of their child during some kind of a flu pandemic. Despite everything, she finds Theo to talk him into transporting a young refugee (called “Fugees” in the movie) named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) as a favor. There’s a scene where Theo goes to visit his cousin, a government minister played by Danny Huston, to purchase transit papers where we get a glimpse of how some of the more privileged citizens are navigating the end of the world.
The movie, having already severely deviated from the source material, takes another turn when they get a ride from Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), another solider for the Fishes. Their ride is ambushed by a group of refugees and Julian is shot dead. When they finally make it to the safe house, Theo finds out that A) Luke was behind the attack where Julian was killed and B) Kee is pregnant and the other woman traveling with her, Miriam (Pam Ferris), is her midwife.
Theo wakes up in the middle of the night and finds out through eavesdropping that Luke planned the hit to take the Fishes over from Julian and use Kee as a political tool. Theo wakes the women up and busts them out of the “safe” house. I put “safe” in scare quotes because the house they were staying in was full of people trying to hurt them. Doesn’t sound very “safe” to me and those are the kind of hard-hitting truths we deal in over here at Nathan’s Movie Collection HQ.
Cuarón tells a story set in a dystopian society and avoids using the Special Chosen One trope—a term I just made up—when it comes to any of the main characters. I’m sure there’s an actual term for this trope that a real film critic came up with after watching a French movie but for now, this is my Special Chosen Idea. Point I’m making is that we never find out that Theo has something special that will save the world/defeat the enemy/unlock the gloopy-glorp/whatever sci-fi nonsense one makes up to super charge their character. He’s just a crank who wants to get stoned with his best friend Michael Caine. Kee isn’t the Special Chosen One either. When Theo asks who the father is, who says she’s a virgin before bursting out laughing.
“Fork knows,” she says. “I don't know half the wankers'6 names.”
None of the main characters are presented as wholly pure or good, but Cuarón doesn’t condemn them for it either. The world they’re navigating is cruel and unforgiving enough as it is and they’re handling it the way any normal person would. Cuarón’s direction with Chivo’s camerawork puts you so deeply in the characters’ perspectives, the stakes are clear in every action sequence.
Despite how it ends, I think Children of Men has a weirdly hopeful ending. Theo and Kee are able to escape on a boat. Theo’s been shot and it’s left unclear whether he’s going to survive his wound. As Theo is showing Kee how to burp the baby, she tells him that she’s going to name her Dylan, the name of Theo and Julian’s lost son.
Children of Men is surprisingly hopeful for this kind of movie. I think about Roger Ebert’s review where he nails what makes those opening scenes so effective: “Cuarón fulfills the promise of futuristic fiction; characters do not wear strange costumes…but look just like today, except tired and shabby.” I have a lot thoughts reading that section seventeen years after this review was written but I’m too tired and shabby to get into it.
The last scene though made me think of the Mr. Rogers quote about looking for the helpers7 when times are frightening and unpredictable. This is one of many things to do in order to fight systemic injustice, so don’t think I’m flattening the work of social justice down to “just be like Mr. Rogers,” although it’s not the worst place to start. For me, it’s about helping those if you have the knowledge or resources to do so, even if the world is falling apart all around you, it’s not in vain if you’re helping someone’s life be a little easier. Watching Theo show Kee how to burp her baby with what might be his last moments really gets me every time.
All of what I said about going to work during COVID was meant in good fun. No one ever tried to throw me into their van, so things really could have been worse.
This is a setup in a joke sentence so please don’t read this as my serious take on how the entire world was affected by the novel coronavirus.
Feel free to follow me on Letterboxd at nguinn if you have an account on there.
Mexico’s version of the Oscars.
No offense to the people of Nowhere, Illinois. Or Indiana.
Wikipedia.
The Good Place method only works for American profanity. If any British ones slip through, you’re on your own.
"My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world."
I haven’t seen this yet (as you know 😅), so saving this for later... but I have no doubt it’s a banger of a review!