Will a science fiction movie ever be nominated for Best Picture? When pigs fly!

As visions of the future go, Children of Men’s is fairly dystopic. It’s twenty-odd years from now and, for some reason that neither the characters nor we ever learn, the human race has stopped reproducing. It’s been over eighteen years since the last child on earth was born. Freed from that annoying “let’s leave a better world for our children” thing, people have pretty much let things go to hell. Most of the world has been rocked by war and environmental disaster. Britain, where our story takes place, is something of a police state, complete with curfews, closed borders and restrictions on travel even within the country. 

Theo (Clive Owen) is a burnt-out office drone who gets through the day with the help of a splash of whiskey in his morning coffee. His ex-wife Julian, who is now either a terrorist or a freedom fighter depending on your point of view, asks him for help getting a refugee named Kee to the coast. Theo agrees, for a price, but things go wrong and before you can say “reluctant hero” he learns that Kee is pregnant. Theo finds himself in the position of keeping the first unborn child in nearly two decades safe from the various factions that would exploit it, and helping Kee get to the Human Project, a band of rogue scientists still trying to save the human race.  

At least it's easier to get a seat on the bus.

Children of Men succeeds on many levels: thoughtful science fiction, compelling character study, thrilling action movie. Director Alfonso Cuarón, who also adapted the P.D. James novel with a small army of co-screenwriters, launches viewers right into the action and doesn’t take any breaks for exposition, letting the world fill in around the characters. One thing we never find out is why humans have become infertile and that’s fine with me. I know some people find the lack of explanation frustrating but that’s really not what the movie is about. What it is about, in my humble opinion, is the world’s reaction to the situation and the reawakening of one man’s hope and idealism.

As that man, Theo is a noble but flawed hero. He used to fight the good fight, working against his increasingly oppressive government, but time and the death of his and Julian’s son have defeated him. Clive Owen is brilliant here, showing us a man half-heartedly hanging on to the ragged edges of his life. His weariness and cynicism are softened by scenes with Michael Caine as his best friend Jasper, an aging hippie whose stories and bohemian-intellectual cottage give us insight into the man Theo once was. When Theo is compelled to action, first reluctantly then through a series of shocks that reignite his idealism, Owen plays it just right. Theo is no super-hero; he’s in over his depth, unsure how to proceed, and we see both Theo’s determination and his vulnerability.

If there's not already a rock band called The Human Project there should be. You can't buy advertising like that.

Julianne Moore is tough, smart and surprisingly playful as the militant Julian. Chiwetel Ejiofor is excellent as her cagy second-in-command. Pam Ferris seems to embody the spirit that got the Brits through the Blitz as an earnest, practical midwife who never expected her skills to prove useful again. The true standout, though, is Claire-Hope Ashitay as Kee, alternately glowing and serene in her earth-motherliness, and terrified at the prospect of childbirth, something she’s never been prepared for.

Cuarón’s work here is virtuoso filmmaking. He establishes a tone early on of despair and decay punctuated by unexpected bursts of violence and danger leavened with the occasional flash of dark humor. He has a knack for thrusting us into the action in unexpected ways, like during a chase scene when the camera remains trapped in the car with the participants. His staging evokes chilling images from the nightly news without ever pointing a big blinking arrow at them. The film’s climax occurs during an urban battle scene that could have been taking place in Baghdad, and includes a single steadicam shot that was easily, I don’t know, let’s say several minutes long, following Theo through a building under siege. Why didn’t Cuarón get an Oscar nod for directing? I demand a recount.

Children of Men is a challenging but rewarding film, its bleak world-view giving way to a tentative hope. It’s the first movie in a long time that I would have gladly sat down and immediately watched again. If you like your fiction – science or otherwise – on the smart side, catch this one before it’s gone.

Gorilla Pants rating: 4 out of 4 bananas