Children of Men (2006)
Country: JAP/GB/US
Technical: col 109m
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan
Synopsis:
In a world of the future there are no children (sterility having become endemic) and the death of the world's youngest human being is cause for international mourning. Against this background Britain is all but alone in fighting to stave off anarchy amid a tide of illegal immigration, but at the cost of an increasingly repressive state apparatus. When a covert political organisation recruits its leader's former husband to procure travel documents, the latter soon finds himself on his own, escorting a pregnant woman to the coast to seek asylum on board a legendary vessel that passes once a year.
Review:
Cuarón's masterly filming of P. D. James's novel breaks new ground in political film-making, combining conventional thriller elements (28 Days Later) with a realistic mise-en-scène from international arthouse cinema, and key issues confronting the present: the price of ecological imbalance, the relativity of terms like 'terrorist'. Action scenes are painstakingly conceived in long sequence shots, and human interaction is mercifully free of those 'no way' moments so characteristic of generic filmmaking. The scene towards the end in which people stop killing each other for a moment, overcome by the sight, and sound, of a newborn infant says more about how life has become worthless than any amount of speechifying, though there is one 'Land and Freedom' council of war scene which grates a little. Music by John Tavener is used judiciously and to great effect, and the visualisation of a near-future world is nightmarishly detailed and believable: a triumph that leaves you breathless but elated.
Country: JAP/GB/US
Technical: col 109m
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan
Synopsis:
In a world of the future there are no children (sterility having become endemic) and the death of the world's youngest human being is cause for international mourning. Against this background Britain is all but alone in fighting to stave off anarchy amid a tide of illegal immigration, but at the cost of an increasingly repressive state apparatus. When a covert political organisation recruits its leader's former husband to procure travel documents, the latter soon finds himself on his own, escorting a pregnant woman to the coast to seek asylum on board a legendary vessel that passes once a year.
Review:
Cuarón's masterly filming of P. D. James's novel breaks new ground in political film-making, combining conventional thriller elements (28 Days Later) with a realistic mise-en-scène from international arthouse cinema, and key issues confronting the present: the price of ecological imbalance, the relativity of terms like 'terrorist'. Action scenes are painstakingly conceived in long sequence shots, and human interaction is mercifully free of those 'no way' moments so characteristic of generic filmmaking. The scene towards the end in which people stop killing each other for a moment, overcome by the sight, and sound, of a newborn infant says more about how life has become worthless than any amount of speechifying, though there is one 'Land and Freedom' council of war scene which grates a little. Music by John Tavener is used judiciously and to great effect, and the visualisation of a near-future world is nightmarishly detailed and believable: a triumph that leaves you breathless but elated.
Country: JAP/GB/US
Technical: col 109m
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan
Synopsis:
In a world of the future there are no children (sterility having become endemic) and the death of the world's youngest human being is cause for international mourning. Against this background Britain is all but alone in fighting to stave off anarchy amid a tide of illegal immigration, but at the cost of an increasingly repressive state apparatus. When a covert political organisation recruits its leader's former husband to procure travel documents, the latter soon finds himself on his own, escorting a pregnant woman to the coast to seek asylum on board a legendary vessel that passes once a year.
Review:
Cuarón's masterly filming of P. D. James's novel breaks new ground in political film-making, combining conventional thriller elements (28 Days Later) with a realistic mise-en-scène from international arthouse cinema, and key issues confronting the present: the price of ecological imbalance, the relativity of terms like 'terrorist'. Action scenes are painstakingly conceived in long sequence shots, and human interaction is mercifully free of those 'no way' moments so characteristic of generic filmmaking. The scene towards the end in which people stop killing each other for a moment, overcome by the sight, and sound, of a newborn infant says more about how life has become worthless than any amount of speechifying, though there is one 'Land and Freedom' council of war scene which grates a little. Music by John Tavener is used judiciously and to great effect, and the visualisation of a near-future world is nightmarishly detailed and believable: a triumph that leaves you breathless but elated.