Fuzzball Film Review: Children of Men

Well, I'm still reeling. First let me say that I had no reservations about seeing this film because DUH, Clive Owen is of course my movie star husband. I also thought that the premise was scarier than any sort of horror film that could ever be conceived, and I was therefore intrigued.

Now, I don't normally watch dark, violent films because I go to the movies to be transported out of the real world and into a (hopefully) better one, at least for a short time. I don't pay money to be reminded what a shithole of a world it is that we we live in. However I couldn't resist the lure of Clive and I thought that Children of Men just looked amazing.

I think that anyone that goes to see Children should also read Y: The Last Man, at least the first issue. (You can read the first issue online HERE.) You will GET IT, man, you will understand the madness. Seriously, if you enjoy Children I have absolute faith that you will enjoy the adventures of Yorrick & Co.

 

And now to the dirt -- MAJOR SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP -- DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE!

I was horrified throughout the entire film. It was like Armageddon mixed with The Holocaust mixed with the suicide-bombing insanity of the Middle East. There didn't seem to be any hope anywhere. No beauty, no humor, no happiness...except around Jasper (Caine). When he sacrificed himself for Kee and Theo I just lost it.

Was I the only person that was surprised by the duplicity of the Fishes? I know, I know, I'm terribly naive. Still, what wankers, huh? I did know that they would catch up to Theo and Kee later on in the film, so I was prepared. Sort of.

Did anyone else notice the large roles that animals, especially dogs, played in this movie? I'm still digesting it, but I know there's something important there.

I was brought to tears at the end when Kee and Theo were walking through the crowd of immigrants and soldiers in total silence, broken only by the baby's cries. When the soldiers dropped to their knees I sobbed. I should have known that Theo (Clive) was going to die, but owwww it hurt when Kee was calling out to him in that tiny rowboat.

There's more to discuss, but I need time to ponder. What did you think of the movie?

Comments

[Laura]

I haven't seen the movie yet. I have read the book, though. It's by P.D. James (same title) and I read it years ago. I loved the book. From what I understand the book and movie vary in many ways (for example, I don't remember Theo dying in the book). I'm always leery of seeing a movie version of a book I really enjoyed.

[The Golden Child]

The way it was filmed was cool, and clive owen is cool (even though he's the same guy in every movie), but the entire movie is based on this completely bizarre fact that we just have to accept. I'm all about suspension of disbelief, but its like they started the movie and go "oh, okay, so here it is: 'no woman on earth can have a child anymore, and they all stopped having them at the exact same time...aaaand start the movie now!'" Meanwhile I was like "wait, what? wait a second, no woman on the planet can bear a child anymore?" I mean, I could start a movie and say "alright, all of a sudden every single human on the planet woke up without their thumbs! yeah, so now NO ONE HAS THUMBS." i dunno, i liked the movie, but it left so many questions unanswered. and not just the interesting questions a good movie like the matrix creates for you to talk about with your friends afterwards, i'm talking about questions that seem outrageously critical to your understanding of the movie. it was mentioned at the end of one sentence from jasper about gamma rays or pollution...those seem viable, i'd like to know more! then what were the fishes going to do kee? what was the human project? its a cool movie, but its not as great as everyone says.

[Gymshoes]

I finally saw the movie yesterday afternoon. It was wonderful. I thought Jasper (Caine) came to a brilliant end. I knew it was coming, I was bracing for it, but I wasn't prepared for his cussed defiance, literally laughing in the face of death. Best use of "pull my finger", ever. :-)

I wasn't prepared for Julian's death. That came as a shock to me. Canny casting choice: they get an amazing actress (she's one of my favs) then kill her early in the film. No one expects that. I was surprised by the duplicity of the Fishers...and it raises some disturbing questions about the cafe bombing (which is another thing I was prepared for because of the trailer, but I still jumped when the bomb went off!). Julian said they'd stopped bombing because it was counter-productive and the government was blowing things up to turn people against the Fishers. But, what if the decision to kill Julian and exploit the child for political purposes wasn't a one-off thing?

That coup raises the question of an organization-within-the-organization that didn't see eye-to-eye with Julian's decisions about the way they could progress. Perhaps there existed a secret militant group within the Fishers that continued the bombing. Perhaps Julian's death was the culmination of on-going secret operations by the others on the executive board.

One more note about the the Fisher tretchery: I thought it weird when they first came to the farmhouse, all tramatized by the attack and Julian's death, that the Fishers immediately told Mary to take the girl to the barn. WTF?? Shouldn't she have a nice lie-down upstairs in a bedroom? Mary and Kee were part of the group, not high enough to vote, but still, not a security risk. The only reason to keep them away from the house instead of just telling Mary to take the girl upstairs, put her to bed and sit with her was that they might have discussed the recent covert operation at the meeting when they voted and they couldn't risk being overheard.

The large role of dogs (and to a lesser extent cats) in the film is (from what I've been told about the book) a reaction of the society to the inability to have children. Pets become surrogate babies. Did you notice how the gypsy woman, Eureka, wouldn't let go of her dog for anything? How she held it in her arms like a baby?

The best scene in the movie was the sudden silencing of the soldiers and the guns at the sight of the baby, how the crowd parted. I cried, too.

I started reading the book as soon as we got home...got interrupted and didn't get very far, but there are a number of changes that are apparent right off. A significant one is that in the book it's men who are infertile (hence the title "Children Of Men"). In the movie it's the women who gradually lose the ability to carry a child to term and eventually to conceive. This is important because the baby is a girl. I noticed that every time the child's gender was mentioned, there was this slight emphasis on the word "girl". I think the implication is that since Kee is fertile and she has produced a girl, then that girl will (maybe) be fertile as well. Kee can save the human race from extinction not just because she can bear children, but because her children can bear children (with either other children who may be under the protection of The Human Project or with the last generation of men born before the infertility began).

Another thing mentioned in the first few pages of the book is that while initially in the panic, governments set up co-operative organizations so everyone in the world was working together on the infertility problem, as time went on co-operation lessened. Each country began keeping its research secret, and a nationalistic competiton began to see what country would "inherit the earth". Secrets, spying, every country trying to perpetuate it's own race. Applying this context to the movie, it's easy to see that Kee and her "fugee" baby would've ended up as a grisley lab-experiment if the government had gotten hold of them...and this racist attitude raises the question: if the Fishers made Kee's baby public in the hope of provoking a mass Uprising, after that first flush of hope, would the xenophobic (white) public see the non-white baby as their future? Or would they choose Quietus and extinction---or murder---rather than a Britain descended from black refugees?

I'm looking forward to reading the book, now that I've started it. I suspect from the way it begins that it will be even more thought-provoking and disturbing than the movie. :-)

[Jess]

Just saw it a few days ago. Great movie, beautifully filmed...very intense. I walked out of the theater positively exhausted.

[GDG]

I saw this one last week. It is one the few movies that lives up to the hype. Good call on Y:The Last Man. Both of them are scary as hell, and each one leaves you with a little hope.