CS Weekly Archive > DVD of the Day > 04/13/07

Optimism in Action

by jason davis

Finding the faintest glimmer of hope in a dystopic world, Children of Men delivers social criticism alongside kinetic action in a startling realistic world where one man holds the key to ending nearly to decades of human infertility.

Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (Cuarón directed)
Based on the book by P.D. James

Eighteen years after the last child was born on a suddenly sterile Earth, one-time political activist-turned-bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is reunited his ex-wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), leader of a radical organization opposed to the paranoid British government's ruthless anti-immigrant stance Needing Faron to acquire transit papers for an illegal immigrant named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), Taylor must trust him with the knowledge that the girl is pregnant and likely to become the unwilling tool of the dangerous extremist groups willing to deploy her has a weapon against the state unless she can be delivered to an enigmatic group dedicated to preserving the human species. Elegantly creating a world and inhabiting it with an unwitting hero, Children of Men manages the difficult task of conveying a message while still delivering a suspenseful story with all the requisite entertainment value expected from a political thriller.

The despairing world of 2027 welcomes the viewer to the film with decay and apathy filling the screen. The screenplay deftly sets up the root of this malaise —the terminal infertility of the human race—with a news broadcast detailing the demise of the world's youngest person, an 18-year-old nicknamed "Baby Diego." Throughout the film, the absence of children haunts each scene in a palpable sense as covert meetings are held in the ruins of grade schools and the memory of Faron and Taylor's long-dead child forms the engine for Faron's eventual evolution from apathetic antihero to a proactive protagonist. Indeed, the sudden appearance of a potential child, in the form of Kee's fetus, transforms the entire mood of the movie from one of overwhelming despair to a struggle to kindle the slightest spark of hope if her child can elude the forces that would use it for political, rather than humanitarian, gain.

Faron provides a perfect protagonist for the story, as he begins the film in a state of apathy that both establishes the norm for the world in which he lives and puts him on even footing with an audience that doesn't yet know why it should care about this world and what's going on in it. The news reports of Diego's death coupled with a terrorist bombing moments later upset the balance of Faron's world and start him on a journey from bystander to hero that accelerates with each succeeding plot point, narrowing the possible guardians for Kee down to him alone. The screenplay thus implicates the viewer in Faron's heroic journey as both the everyman on the screen and the average moviegoer realize simultaneously that there's no other way to save the baby.

The story belies the trappings of its dire setting to create a singularly optimistic story of individuals desperate to attain an almost impossible goal of delivering the young mother to the possibly mythical Human Project, which seeks to save the human race from extinction. The dichotomy between the hope Faron must embrace that the Human Project exists and can protect Kee is diametrically opposed to the campaign of fear used by the government to control the population in its final generations. The film remains purposefully ambiguous in nailing down many key plot points and simultaneously aids the universality of the story by allowing the viewer to create his or her own metaphors to understand the film. Every action undertaken by Faron and his compatriots is a leap of faith, and the film's final sequence, set in an illegal immigrant detainment center, unfolds with an awesome reverence that finds a long-lost sound bridging political divides in a surreal moment that goes to the heart of the movie's message of hope.

- The Possibility of Hope
- Under Attack
- Children of Men comments by Slavoj Zizek
- Deleted scenes
- Theo & Julian
- Futuristic Designs

Children of Men's most substantial supplement, a documentary titled The Possibility of Hope, uses the film as a springboard to discuss a number of social, political, and ecological issues inherent in the movie's world. A collection of international philosophers and scientists paint a cautionary portrait of humanity's misuse of the planet and the dire consequences such actions will inevitably yield. A thoughtful assembly of ideas that complement the notions forwarded by the movie itself, The Possibility of Hope expands the scope of supplemental DVD material in an informative and welcome direction. A handful of deleted scenes and several production-oriented pieces fill out the rest of the bonus menu. Sadly, despite its Oscar-nominated screenplay, Universal eschews a commentary featuring the writers that would have greatly benefited the student of screenwriting.

Though it never explicitly states its message of hope, Children of Men conveys its optimistic faith in the human race by contrasting a hopeless world with a hero stirred to action by the possibility of something more. In this fashion, the movie leads by example, both in its philosophy and its execution.

Children of Men
Universal Home Entertainment
Rated R; 110 min.
$39.98

Buy it now

Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly , a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Children of Men courtesy Universal Home Entertainment

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