It took Gravity to make me realize that Alfonso Cuarón is simultaneously one of our most gifted directors for visuals and one of our most challenged when it comes to writing or choosing a script. But that should have been clear from Children of Men.
This film starts with colossally effective visuals, from the tracking shots that follow Theo into and out of a coffee shop to the set décor that shows social order collapsing around him in washed out color tones. Other tour-de-force camera work includes the ambush on the road as seen from inside the car – where we are inside the car and looking around at everyone else who's there – and the very long tracking shot as Theo runs through a firefight in a Fugee camp to get to Kee. Long, continuous shots are a fundamental element of the cinematography here, and they’re not only effective story-telling but they bring us into the film in a strong way.
The art décor is likewise powerful. The film shows us the streets, train stations, advertisements and apartment buildings of our own daily life, but all of these are diluted with filters that flatten the color scheme to cold blues and greens and darkened with smoke scorches, breaks, stains and tears to the sets. Ruin informs the frame throughout this film. Even the countryside is littered with burning animal corpses. Many other elements of Children of Men also start in the world of contemporary life with terrorism, jihad, torture and a banal, lapdog media. The media promotes escape via painless, drug-induced suicide while the military shoves, herds and beats the population. And when the military isn't being abusive, paramilitary groups like the Fishes are. There’s no reprieve in Children of Men from violence, oppression and decay. It’s Britain “soldiering on.”
Children of Men starts strongly with engaging characters; a fast-paced, unpredictable story; and lots of enigma to be resolved. Theo is a demoralized, hopeless man walking through the social collapse in a daze. He begins an arc of change when he reconnects with Julian, his ex-wife, whose faith in and ongoing affection for him kindles some stirrings of hope in him. His re-awakening continues through her death and his meeting Kee, a woman pregnant with the first human child in a couple of decades. To this point, Children of Men is a good story told well.
However, after Theo and Kee escape the farm, the story lapses into maudlin cliché and convention, and the air goes out of the story. We get obvious character gestures (Theo is depressed because he lost his son at a young age, rather like Ryan in Gravity), and the soundtrack starts to carry religion-imbued chant and music. The first born Son of Man inspires awe and love among the downtrodden in a long, painful apartment building scene where the action stops and everyone reaches out to touch the mother an infant as they slowly progress out of the building. Once the two leave the building, the war outside stops, too, as Kee carries the miraculously-conceived child past the soldiers and their armor. The war resumes after the new Prince of Peace passes. And this new born hope not only assumes the obvious attributes of Christ but is also the catalyst for Theo’s redemption. Theo dies at the end of the film strong, vital, and committed after his helping to rescue Kee and the baby. There's hardly anything unexpected or original in the second half of this film.
The visuals in Children of Men are powerful and effective, from the camera work to the scene design, but many of the ideas in the second half of the movie are obvious and trite. Here’s hoping that Alfonso Cuarón can one day find a script collaborator who can give Cuarón’s characters and story the muscle of his camera.
