Children of Men
From the pre-title scenes on, almost every sequence in this amazing, kinetic thriller has some kind of unusual twist or shock. You think you know where the story is going and then it goes off some place completely different. The audience is as baffled as the main character as to where his journey will take him next. And the pacing is relentless, he barely has time to stop and catch his breath before he's carried along to the next potentially disastrous situation. The story is deceptively simple, the burnt-out hero finds himself thru spiraling circumstances responsible for getting the first pregnant girl on Earth in 18 years to safety. Almost every review describes the film as "bleak", which it most certainly is, but there is also a great deal of cynical humor and an ultimately humanistic and hopeful denouement.
There is danger in every moment, and it just keeps building and building. There is an extraordinary birthing scene, life among carnage and utter desolation, and then that is topped by an even better, deeply moving scene where the baby is carried thru a building literally being torn apart by bullets and bombs and then into the street; as the mother and crying baby make their way among the violence, everything stops, an impromptu ceasefire, and never has the tragedy of war seemed so absurd as both the victims inside the building and the soldiers outside reach out in awe to touch the miracle child and its mother as they pass by, only to then resume the battle as they finally pass. Even here there is a touch of cynical humor as the hero asks the mother, bullets tearing up walls and flesh all around them, how the wailing baby is. "Annoyed", she replies w/perfect concern and sarcasm.
There are wonderful small touches throughout in the characterizations. The hero lost his child to sickness yrs ago, this deepens his empathy to the mother and child and provides believable motivation besides his inherent decency. And several times throughout the film animals are drawn to him, as if they can sense his goodness even if he no longer believes in it himself. (At one point he tries on different discarded shoes for the best fit, a metaphor for his own confusion as to where he fits into this whole mad scenario he has found himself involved in.) The "terrorists" who seek to exploit the child and murder innocents in order to do so are the "bad guys", but they are not one-dimensional, rather they believe they have a noble, greater cause, and perhaps they do in a world gone quite mad. When the mother spits in the face of their leader, we can see he is genuinely dismayed and hurt by her contempt. This is also a political film, and one of the question it asks is "What is a terrorist?"
The action sequences are thrilling, and like everything else, unique. There is a scene where a motorcycle is chasing the car (going backwards) carrying the mother and several other main characters, and one of them is killed. As we (and they) are still recovering from the shock and wondering how they'll get away w/no weapons, one character kicks the car door open to hit the cycle and it goes flying. It's very quick, beautifully filmed and edited, horrific and perfectly believable. In the long sequence when the apt building in the war zone is being bombarded from the outside, it seems to be disintegrating piece-by-piece, as do the the people themselves inside as they are also torn apart bit-by-bit. When the main characters make a getaway from the terrorist compound in a stolen car, they first disable the other cars, but then their car won't start and there is a chase sequence where they roll down a shallow incline, periodically trying to jump-start the car, as the terrorists chase after them on foot, shooting. It's both funny and full of tension, the most unlikely of getaway scenes.
The film is also a character study. The physical journey the hero undertakes is also a journey of his soul. A bitter, former activist who has lost his "faith" to the unforgiving "chance" of life (as one character puts it), he finds that faith again: In the people who continually surprise him by risking and giving their lives throughout their plight, in the mother and her courageous devotion to her child, and then ultimately, at the end, in himself.
Harold
