Children of Men

The human race has not had a newborn for eighteen years, and an innocent Fuji girl gets pregnant.

The world is thrown into a chaotic world run by fear and racism. Britain is the only country on earth that hasn't caved under the childless weight of the world, but has had to sacrifice many things to achieve that. No more immigration, Ids required to access different parts of the country, even for citizens, suicide pills doled out in weekly rations for those unable to cope with the bleak childless future, concentration camps, racism. Bleak happenings indeed.

The movie's writing was handled well. The characters are all quite well defined, oftentimes in a single line of dialogue. The old hippy is defined by the line, after telling a character to inhale a puff of weed, “cough. Do you taste that? I call it strawberry cough.” The main character is defined by the line, “good thing I didn't want cream in my coffee, or I would have been blown to pieces.” the mother character is defined not even by dialogue, but her clumsy and earnest attempts to do yoga.

Thematically it's an interesting question. “What does humanity do when faced with extinction?” and deals with the threat of underpopulation opposed to the often overused theme of overpopulation. The love in this movie is of the most interest to me. There isn't really a traditional romantic story. There are hints of a few throughout the movie, but the main source of love in the movie is everyone's love for this girl's baby. The baby is essentially Jesus, able to stop fights mid heat, causing people of different backgrounds to work together, filling people with hope, changing men, both for the better and the worse. Essentially, the message is, “everyone, stop being such douches to eachother. Play together, dammit, and be nice.”

the movie had nudity. At first, I thought, “my, that was unnecessary,” but after thinking about it, no. No it wasn't. I think the nudity was very well served. It's when the girl reveals to the protagonist that she is in fact pregnant, and she is very pregnant. I think this scene was very intelligent for 3 reasons.

1. it was beautifully done. This wasn't nudity for the sake of bewbs, this was thoughtful and planned out. It was very tasteful.

2. The very first piece of art ever discovered was a miniature sculpture of a nude, pregnant woman. I think this movie was trying to draw a parallel from their events to the dawn of man.

3. A pregnant woman is not only iconic, it's incredibly... mysterious. There's something to what happens to a woman that's beyond words. It's a beautiful thing that not only garners the automatic interest of every woman within shouting distance, but it's something that absolutely mystifies the minds of men, as it's something that women experience that has no close approximate in our range of experience. A woman can hide her pregnancy with loose and bulky clothes (as this girl did), but a girl completely deprived of that cannot hide what she is.

4. Bonus round. It was showing what she is: a vulnerable little girl carrying another vulnerable little girl.

This is not to say that I condone nudity in 99% of all instances in Hollywood. I would say that less than 1% it's warranted, justified, or artful. It almost never is. In fact, this is the only time in my years of watching a movie that I think the nudity served a purpose.

The pacing of the movie drags a bit in the middle, maybe. I mean, you have to really push it to squeak out a maybe. It's an incredibly lean film with no extraneous details and everything going into plot and development. The build is a little bit slow, but not too long. The movie all of a sudden explodes, and keeps going with additional minor explosions propelling it along.

2006 made me feel a little spoiled as far as movies are concerned. It was a pretty good year, and it's going to make a nice addition to my shelf: The Prestige, V for Vendetta (wow, I didn't even realize that was an '06 movie. I thought it was '05), The Fountain (my fave for the year), Children of Men, and Pan's Labyrinth.

As a side quandary: what is it with Britain that makes it the target for incredibly facist, tightfisted, controlling regimes? Both V and Children portray that, as does 1984, A Brave New World, Brazil, and while Equilibrium doesn't come right out and say it, everyone has an accent. I mean, come on folks, who are we kidding?