Children of Men
Encyclopedia
Children of Men is a 2006 science fiction film
loosely adapted from P. D. James
's 1992 novel The Children of Men
, directed by Alfonso Cuarón
. In 2027, two decades of human infertility
have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in England, where the last functioning government imposes oppressive immigration laws on refugees. Clive Owen
plays civil servant Theo Faron, who must help a pregnant West African refugee (Claire-Hope Ashitey
) escape the chaos. Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore
, Michael Caine
, Pam Ferris
, and Chiwetel Ejiofor
.
The film was released on September 22, 2006 in the UK and on December 25 in the US, with critics noting the relationship between the Christmas opening and the film's themes of hope, redemption and faith. Children of Men received positive reviews and was recognised for its achievements in screenwriting, cinematography, art direction and innovative single-shot
action sequences. The film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing at the 79th Academy Awards
. It won two British Academy Film Awards
and received the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
.
, which still has a government, is deluged by asylum seekers. In response, it has become a militarised police state
as British forces round up and detain immigrants. Kidnapped by an immigrant rights group known as "The Fishes," former activist turned cynical bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen
) is surprised to see its leader is his estranged wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore
). The couple parted ways after their son died from a flu pandemic
in 2008. Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers for a young female refugee named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey
), which Theo obtains from his cousin Nigel (Danny Huston
), a government minister
. However, the papers require the bearer to be accompanied, so Theo agrees to escort Kee in exchange for more money. Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor
), a Fishes member, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and Miriam (Pam Ferris
), a former midwife, towards the coast to a boat. They are ambushed by an armed gang and Julian is fatally shot. Two police officers stop their car, but Luke kills them, and the group escapes to a safe house.
Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant, and that Julian told her that she should trust only him. Julian had intended to hand Kee over to the "Human Project", a group of scientists dedicated to curing infertility, supposedly based in the Azores
. However, Luke proposes keeping Kee in England, and she agrees to stay. Later that night, Theo awakens and eavesdrops on a meeting of Luke and other members. He discovers that Julian's death was orchestrated by the Fishes so they could use Kee's baby as a tool to support the coming revolution. Theo wakes Kee and Miriam and they steal a car, escaping to the secluded hideaway of aging hippie Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine
), a former political cartoonist
and Theo's friend. A plan is formulated to board the Human Project ship Tomorrow which will arrive offshore from the Bexhill
refugee camp. Jasper proposes getting Syd (Peter Mullan
), a camp guard, to smuggle them in. The Fishes trail the group to Jasper's hideout, but Theo, Miriam, and Kee get away. Jasper stays behind to try to buy them some time. Before the Fishes arrive, he gives the government-issued suicide drug Quietus
to his catatonic wife. Jasper is gunned down by the Fishes in cold blood, horrifying Theo, who witnesses his murder before escaping with Miriam and Kee.
Later, they meet Syd, who transports them to Bexhill as fake prisoners. When Kee begins having contractions
on a bus, Miriam distracts a suspicious guard with religious mania, and is taken away. Theo and Kee are taken to the camp, where conditions are appalling, chaotic, and violent. They meet Marichka (Oana Pellea), who provides a room where Kee gives birth to a girl. The next day, Syd locates Theo and Kee, having connected them with the police murders, and threatens to turn them in for a reward. He also informs them that a full-scale war between the refugees, including the Fishes, and the army has begun. The group beat off Syd and escape. Amidst the violent clash between refugees and British troops, the Fishes capture Kee. Theo tracks Kee and her baby to an apartment building which is under heavy fire from the military. The combatants stop fighting momentarily, awed by the presence of a baby, enabling Theo, Kee, and the baby to escape.
Marichka leads them to a boat in a sewer, but refuses to join them. As Theo rows away, he reveals to Kee that he was shot. They then witness a full-scale aerial bombing of Bexhill by the Royal Air Force
, and Kee tells Theo she will name her baby Dylan after Theo's dead son. Theo loses consciousness just as the boat Tomorrow approaches through a thick fog.
and faith in the face of overwhelming futility and despair. The film's source, the novel The Children of Men
by P. D. James
, describes what happens when society is unable to reproduce, using male infertility to explain this problem. In the novel, it is made clear that hope depends on future generations. James writes, "It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all too soon, the very words 'justice,' 'compassion,' 'society,’ 'struggle,' 'evil,' would be unheard echoes on an empty air."
The film switches the infertility from male to female but never explains its cause: environmental destruction and divine punishment are considered. This unanswered question (and others in the film) have been attributed to Cuarón's dislike for expository film: "There's a kind of cinema I detest, which is a cinema that is about exposition and explanations.... It's become now what I call a medium for lazy readers.... Cinema is a hostage of narrative. And I'm very good at narrative as a hostage of cinema." Cuaron's disdain for back-story
and exposition led him to use the concept of female infertility as a "metaphor for the fading sense of hope". The "almost mythical" Human Project is turned into a "metaphor for the possibility of the evolution of the human spirit, the evolution of human understanding." Without dictating how the audience should feel by the end of the film, Cuarón encourages viewers to come to their own conclusions about the sense of hope depicted in the final scenes: "We wanted the end to be a glimpse of a possibility of hope, for the audience to invest their own sense of hope into that ending. So if you're a hopeful person you'll see a lot of hope, and if you're a bleak person you'll see a complete hopelessness at the end."
, using documentary, newsreel style to convey what critic Michael Joshua Rowin describes as "stunning verisimilitude
within its mise-en-scène." For Rowin, the film alludes to and resonates with the catastrophic destruction and symbolism of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Rowin, along with film critics Jason Guerrasio and Ethan Alter, observe the film's underlying touchstone of immigration
; Alter notes that the film "makes a potent case against the anti-immigrant sentiment
" popular in modern societies like the United Kingdom and the United States, with Guerrasio describing the film as "a complex meditation on the politics of today".
For Alter and other critics, the structural support and impetus for the contemporary references rests upon the visual nature of the film's exposition
, occurring in the form of imagery as opposed to conventional dialogue. Visually, the refugee camp
s in the film intentionally evoke Abu Ghraib prison
, Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and The Maze
. Other popular images appear, such as a sign over the refugee camp reading "Homeland Security". The similarity between the hellish, cinéma vérité
stylized battle scenes of the film and current news and documentary coverage of the Iraq War, is noted by film critic Manohla Dargis
, describing Cuarón's fictional landscapes as "war zones of extraordinary plausibility".
In the film, refugees are "hunted down like cockroaches," rounded up and put into cages and camps, and even shot, leading film critics like Chris Smith and Claudia Puig to observe symbolic "overtones" and images of the Holocaust. This theme is reinforced in the scene where an elderly refugee woman speaking German is seen detained in a cage, and in the scene where British Homeland Security strips and beats illegal immigrants; a song by The Libertines
, "Arbeit Macht Frei
", plays in the background. "The visual allusions to the Nazi roundups are unnerving," writes Richard A. Blake. "It shows what people can become when the government orchestrates their fears for its own advantage."
Cuarón explains how he uses this imagery to propagate the theme by cross-referencing fictional and futuristic events with real, contemporary, or historical incidents and beliefs:
In the closing credits
, the Sanskrit
words "Shantih Shantih Shantih
" appear as end titles. Writer and film critic Laura Eldred of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
observes that Children of Men is "full of tidbits that call out to the educated viewer". During a visit to his house by Theo and Kee, Jasper says "Shanti, shanti, shanti." Eldred notes that the "shanti" used in the film is also found at the end of an Upanishad
and in the final line of T. S. Eliot
's poem The Waste Land
, a work Eldred describes as "devoted to contemplating a world emptied of fertility: a world on its last, teetering legs". However, "shanti" is also a common beginning and ending to all Hindu prayers, and literally means "peace," referencing the invocation of divine intervention and rebirth through an end to violence.
Aeneid
, Dante's
Divine Comedy
, and Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
, the crux of the journey in Children of Men lies in what is uncovered along the path rather than the terminus itself. Theo's heroic journey to the south coast mirrors his personal quest for "self-awareness", a journey that takes Theo from "despair to hope".
According to Cuarón, the title of P. D. James' book (The Children of Men) is a Catholic allegory derived from a passage of scripture
in the Bible. (Psalm 90 (89):3
of the KJV
: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.") James refers to her story as a "Christian fable" while Cuarón describes it as "almost like a look at Christianity": "I didn't want to shy away from the spiritual archetypes," Cuarón told Filmmaker Magazine. "But I wasn't interested in dealing with dogma
."
This divergence from the original was criticised by some, including Anthony Sacramone of First Things
, who called the film "an act of vandalism", noting the irony of how Cuarón had removed religion from P.D. James' fable, in which morally sterile nihilism
is overcome by Christianity
.
The film has been noted for its use of Christian symbolism
; for example, British terrorists named "Fishes
" protect the rights of refugees. Opening on Christmas Day in the United States, critics compared the characters of Theo and Kee with Joseph and Mary, calling the film a "modern-day Nativity story". Kee's pregnancy is revealed to Theo in a barn, alluding to the manger of the Nativity scene
, when Theo asks Kee who the father of the baby is she jokingly states she is a virgin, and when other characters discover Kee and her baby, they respond with "Jesus Christ" or the sign of the cross
. Also Gabriel Archangel (among others divinities) is invoked in the bus scene; and the fact that an Egyptian woman helps them is a reference to the escape to Egypt.
To highlight these spiritual themes, Cuarón commissioned a 15-minute piece by British composer John Tavener
, a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church
whose work resonates with the themes of "motherhood, birth, rebirth, and redemption in the eyes of God." Calling his score a "musical and spiritual reaction to Alfonso's film", snippets of Tavener's "Fragments of a Prayer" contain lyrics in Latin, German and Sanskrit sung by a mezzo-soprano. Words like "mata" (mother), "pahi mam" (protect me), "avatara" (saviour), and "alleluia" appear throughout the film.
on board in 2001. Cuarón and screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton began rewriting the script after the director completed Y tu mamá también
. Afraid he would "start second guessing things" Cuarón chose not to read P. D. James' novel, opting to have Sexton read the book while Cuarón himself read an abridged version. Cuarón did not immediately begin production, instead directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
. During this period, David Arata rewrote the screenplay and after some back and forth with the director, delivered the draft which secured Clive Owen and sent the film into preproduction. The director's work experience in the United Kingdom exposed him to the "social dynamics of the British psyche", giving him insight into the depiction of "British reality". Cuarón used the film The Battle of Algiers
as a model for social reconstruction in preparation for production, presenting the film to Clive Owen as an example of his vision for Children of Men. In order to create a philosophical and social framework for the film, the director read literature by Slavoj Žižek
, as well as similar works. The film Sunrise
was also influential.
helped contribute to the futuristic, yet battered patina of 2027 London. Children of Men was the second film Cuarón made in London, with the director portraying the city as a character itself, shooting single, wide shots of the city. While Cuarón was preparing the film, the London bombings
occurred, but the director never considered moving the production. "It would have been impossible to shoot anywhere but London, because of the very obvious way the locations were incorporated into the film," Cuarón told Variety. "For example, the shot of Fleet Street
looking towards St. Paul's would have been impossible to shoot anywhere else." Due to these circumstances, the opening terrorist attack scene on Fleet Street was shot one-and-a-half months after the London bombing.
Cuarón chose to shoot some scenes in east London, a location he considered "a place without glamour". The set locations were dressed to make them appear even more run-down; Cuarón says he told the crew "'Let's make it more Mexican'. In other words, we'd look at a location and then say: yes, but in Mexico there would be this and this. It was about making the place look run-down. It was about poverty." He also made use of London's most popular sites, shooting in locations like Trafalgar Square
and Battersea Power Station
. The power station scene (whose conversion into an art archive is a reference to the Tate Modern
), has been compared to Antonioni's
Red Desert. Cuarón added a pig balloon to the scene as homage to Pink Floyd
's Animals. Other art works visible in this scene include Michelangelo
's David
, Picasso's
Guernica
, and Banksy
's British Cops Kissing. London visual effects companies Double Negative and Framestore worked directly with Cuarón from script to post production, developing effects and creating "environments and shots that wouldn't otherwise be possible".
", rejecting technologically advanced proposals and downplaying the science fiction elements of the 2027 setting. The director focused on images reflecting the contemporary period, choosing to have innovative technology in the film's timeline discontinued by 2014. With the future in mind, Cuarón maintained a steady gaze on the present: "We didn't want to be distracted by the future. We didn't want to transport the audience into another reality."
in which extremely complex actions take place. The longest of these are a shot in which Kee gives birth (199 seconds); an ambush on a country road (247 seconds); and a scene in which Theo is captured by the Fishes, escapes, and runs down a street and through a building in the middle of a raging battle (454 seconds). These sequences were extremely difficult to film, although the effect of continuity is sometimes an illusion, aided by CGI
effects.
Cuarón had already experimented with long takes in Great Expectations
, Y tu mamá también
and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
. His style is influenced by the Swiss film Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
, a favorite of Cuarón's. Cuarón reminisces: "I was studying cinema when I first saw [Jonah], and interested in the French New Wave
. Jonah was so unflashy compared to those films. The camera keeps a certain distance and there are relatively few close-ups. It's elegant and flowing, constantly tracking, but very slowly and not calling attention to itself." Complicated long-takes were already popular among more accomplished film directors in Mexico, where the technique is known as plano secuencia.
The creation of the single-shot sequences was a challenging, time-consuming process that sparked concerns from the studio. It took fourteen days to prepare for the single shot in which Clive Owen's character searches a building under attack, and five hours for every time they wanted to reshoot it. In the middle of one shot, blood splattered onto the lens, and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki
convinced the director to leave it in. According to Owen, "Right in the thick of it are me and the camera operator because we're doing this very complicated, very specific dance which, when we come to shoot, we have to make feel completely random."
Cuarón's initial idea for maintaining continuity
during the roadside ambush scene was dismissed by production experts as an "impossible shot to do". Fresh from the visual effects-laden Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuarón suggested using computer-generated imagery to film the scene. Lubezki refused to allow it, reminding the director that they had intended to make a film akin to a "raw documentary
". Instead, a special camera rig invented by Gary Thieltges
of Doggicam Systems was employed, allowing Cuarón to develop the scene as one extended shot. A vehicle was modified to enable seats to tilt and lower actors out of the way of the camera, and the windshield was designed to tilt out of the way to allow camera movement in and out through the front windscreen. A crew of four, including the DP and camera operator, rode on the roof.
However, the commonly reported statement that the action scenes are continuous shots is not entirely true. Visual effects supervisor Frazer Churchill explains that the effects team had to "combine several takes to create impossibly long shots", where their job was to "create the illusion of a continuous camera move." Once the team was able to create a "seamless blend", they would move on to the next shot. These techniques were important for three continuous shots: the coffee shop explosion in the opening shot, the car ambush, and the battlefield scene. The coffee shop scene was composed of "two different takes shot over two consecutive days"; the car ambush was shot in "six sections and at four different locations over one week and required five seamless digital transitions"; and the battlefield scene "was captured in five separate takes over two locations". Churchill and the Double Negative
team created over 160 of these types of effects for the film. In an interview with Variety, Cuarón acknowledged this nature of the "single-shot" action sequences: "Maybe I'm spilling a big secret, but sometimes it's more than what it looks like. The important thing is how you blend everything and how you keep the perception of a fluid choreography through all of these different pieces."
Tim Webber of VFX house Framestore CFC
was responsible for the three-and-a-half minute single take of Kee giving birth, helping to choreograph and create the CG effects of the childbirth. Cuarón had originally intended to use an animatronic baby as Kee's child with the exception of the childbirth scene. In the end, two takes were shot, with the second take concealing Claire-Hope Ashitey's legs, replacing them with prosthetic legs. Cuarón was pleased with the results of the effect, and returned to previous shots of the baby in animatronic form, replacing them with Framestore's computer-generated
baby.
. The mundane sounds of traffic, barking dogs, and advertisements follow the character of Theo through London, East Sussex and Kent, producing what Los Angeles Times
writer Kevin Crust calls an "urban audio rumble". For Crust, the music comments indirectly on the barren world of Children of Men: Deep Purple
's version of "Hush" blaring from Jasper's car radio becomes a "sly lullaby for a world without babies" while King Crimson
's "The Court of the Crimson King
" make a similar allusion with their lyrics, "...three lullabies in an ancient tongue".
Amongst a genre-spanning selection of electronic music
, a remix of Aphex Twin
's "Omgyjya Switch 7", which includes additional samples of screams not present on the original can be heard during the scene in Jasper's house, where Jasper's "Strawberry Cough" (a potent, strawberry-flavoured blend of marijuana) is being sampled. During a conversation between the two men, Radiohead
's "Life in a Glasshouse" plays in the background.
A number of dubstep
tracks, most notably Anti-War Dub by Digital Mystikz
, as well as tracks by Kode9
& The Space Ape and Pressure are also featured.
For the Bexhill scenes during the film's second half, the director makes use of silence and cacophonous sound effect
s such as the firing of automatic weapons and loudspeakers directing the movement of "fugees" (illegal immigrants). Here, classical music by George Frideric Handel
, Gustav Mahler
, and Krzysztof Penderecki
's "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
" complements the chaos of the refugee camp. Throughout the film, John Tavener
's Fragments of a Prayer is used as a spiritual motif to explain and interpret the story without the use of narrative.
A few times during the film, a loud, ringing tone evocative of tinnitus
is heard. This sound generally coincides with the death of a major character (Julian, Jasper) and is referred to by Julian herself, who describes the tones as the last time you'll ever hear that frequency. In this way, then, the loss of the tones is symbolic of the loss of the characters.
on 3 September 2006. On 22 September 2006, the film debuted at #1 in the United Kingdom with $2.4 million in 368 screens. It debuted in a limited release of 16 theaters in the United States on 22 December 2006, expanding to more than 1,200 theaters on 5 January 2007. As of 6 February 2008, Children of Men had grossed $69,612,678 worldwide, with $35,552,383 of the revenue generated in the United States.
, Children of Men received a 93% overall approval out of 196 reviews from critics, and on Metacritic
, the film has a rating of 84 based on 36 reviews.
Dana Stevens
of Slate
called it "the herald of another blessed event: the arrival of a great director by the name of Alfonso Cuarón." Stevens hailed the film's extended car chase and battle scenes as "two of the most virtuoso single-shot chase sequences I've ever seen." Manohla Dargis
of The New York Times
called the film a "superbly directed political thriller", raining accolades on the long chase scenes. "Easily one of the best films of the year" said Ethan Alter of Film Journal International, with scenes that "dazzle you with their technical complexity and visual virtuosity." Jonathan Romney of The Independent
praised the accuracy of Cuarón's portrait of the United Kingdom, but he criticised some of the film's futuristic scenes as "run-of-the-mill future fantasy." Film Comment
's Critics' Poll of the best films of 2006 ranked the film #19 while the 2006 Readers' Poll ranked it #2. On their list of the best movies of 2006, The A.V. Club
, the San Francisco Chronicle
, Slate and The Washington Post
placed the film at number-one. Entertainment Weekly
ranked the film seventh on its end-of-the-decade, top ten list, saying, "Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian 2006 film reminded us that adrenaline-juicing action sequences can work best when the future looks just as grimy as today."
Peter Travers
of Rolling Stone
ranked this #2 on his list of best films of the decade, writing:
According to Metacritic's analysis of the most often and notably noted films on the best-of-the-decade lists, Children of Men is considered the eleventh-greatest film of the 2000s.
General top ten
, who was reported to be pleased with the film, and the screenwriters of Children of Men were awarded the 19th annual USC Scripter Award for the screen adaptation of the novel; Howard Rodman, chair of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Writing Division, described the book-to-screen adaptation as "writing and screen writing of the highest order.", although Gerschatt, writing in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, noted that the screenplay bore very little resemblance to the novel, in the gender of the baby, and the character who was pregnant (Julian, in the novel) and the death of Theo, who in fact, did not die in the novel. The film was also nominated in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay
at the 79th Academy Awards
.
Children of Men also obtained Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki
) and Best Film Editing (Alfonso Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez). The British Academy of Film and Television Arts
nominated Children of Men for Best Visual Effects and honored the film with awards for Best Cinematography
and Best Production Design
at the 60th British Academy Film Awards
. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won the feature film award for Best Cinematography at the 21st American Society of Cinematographers Awards
. The Australian Cinematographers Society
also awarded Lubezki the 2007 International Award for Cinematography for Children of Men.
The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films bestowed the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
on Children of Men, and it received the nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention.
Children of Men was nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.
". The documentary explores the intersection between the film's themes and reality with a critical analysis by eminent scholars: the Slovenian sociologist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek
, anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein
, environmentalist
futurist James Lovelock
, sociologist Saskia Sassen
, human geographer Fabrizio Eva, cultural theorist Tzvetan Todorov
, and philosopher and economist John N. Gray; "Under Attack" features a demonstration of the innovative techniques required for the car chase and battle scenes; Clive Owen and Julianne Moore discuss their characters in "Theo & Julian"; "Futuristic Design" opens the door on the production design and look of the film; "Visual Effects" shows how the digital baby was created. Deleted scenes are included. The film was released on Blu-ray Disc
in the United States on 26 May 2009.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
loosely adapted from P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.-Life and career:James...
's 1992 novel The Children of Men
The Children of Men
The Children of Men is a dystopian novel by P. D. James that was published in 1992. Set in England in 2021, it centres on the results of mass infertility...
, directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón Orozco is a Mexican film director, screenwriter and film producer, best known for his films Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y tu mamá también, and A Little Princess.- Early life :...
. In 2027, two decades of human infertility
Infertility
Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term...
have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in England, where the last functioning government imposes oppressive immigration laws on refugees. Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
plays civil servant Theo Faron, who must help a pregnant West African refugee (Claire-Hope Ashitey
Claire-Hope Ashitey
Clare-Hope Naa K. Ashitey is a British actress of Ghanaian descent. She attended the Centre Stage School of Performing Arts, Southgate...
) escape the chaos. Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....
, Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
, Pam Ferris
Pam Ferris
Pamela Ann "Pam" Ferris is a German-born Welsh actress. She is best known for her starring roles on television as Ma Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, as Laura Thyme in Rosemary & Thyme, and for playing Miss Trunchbull in the movie Matilda...
, and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Chiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor, OBE is an English actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his...
.
The film was released on September 22, 2006 in the UK and on December 25 in the US, with critics noting the relationship between the Christmas opening and the film's themes of hope, redemption and faith. Children of Men received positive reviews and was recognised for its achievements in screenwriting, cinematography, art direction and innovative single-shot
Long take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
action sequences. The film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing at the 79th Academy Awards
79th Academy Awards
The 79th Academy Awards ceremony , honored the best films of 2006 and took place on February 25, 2007 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on ABC. Ellen DeGeneres hosted the ceremony for the first time. The producer was Laura Ziskin. The announcers were Don LaFontaine and Gina Tuttle.The nominees were...
. It won two British Academy Film Awards
60th British Academy Film Awards
The 60th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts took place on 11 February 2007, and honoured the best films of 2006....
and received the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
The Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film is a Saturn Award given to the best film in the science fiction genre by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.-Winners:-External links:*...
.
Plot
The year is 2027 and the youngest person in the world, 18-year-old "Baby" Diego, has just been stabbed to death. Worldwide infertility of unknown causes has led to social unrest, violence, chaos, and the collapse of society. The United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, which still has a government, is deluged by asylum seekers. In response, it has become a militarised police state
Police state
A police state is one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population...
as British forces round up and detain immigrants. Kidnapped by an immigrant rights group known as "The Fishes," former activist turned cynical bureaucrat Theo Faron (Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
) is surprised to see its leader is his estranged wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....
). The couple parted ways after their son died from a flu pandemic
Influenza pandemic
An influenza pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads on a worldwide scale and infects a large proportion of the human population. In contrast to the regular seasonal epidemics of influenza, these pandemics occur irregularly, with the 1918 Spanish flu the most serious pandemic in...
in 2008. Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers for a young female refugee named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey
Claire-Hope Ashitey
Clare-Hope Naa K. Ashitey is a British actress of Ghanaian descent. She attended the Centre Stage School of Performing Arts, Southgate...
), which Theo obtains from his cousin Nigel (Danny Huston
Danny Huston
-Early life:Huston was born in Rome, Italy. He hails from the illustrious Huston acting and filmmaking dynasty. He is the son of legendary director John Huston, half-brother of actress Anjelica Huston and screenwriter Tony Huston, uncle of actor Jack Huston, stepbrother of Allegra Huston, and...
), a government minister
Minister (government)
A minister is a politician who holds significant public office in a national or regional government. Senior ministers are members of the cabinet....
. However, the papers require the bearer to be accompanied, so Theo agrees to escort Kee in exchange for more money. Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Chiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor, OBE is an English actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his...
), a Fishes member, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and Miriam (Pam Ferris
Pam Ferris
Pamela Ann "Pam" Ferris is a German-born Welsh actress. She is best known for her starring roles on television as Ma Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, as Laura Thyme in Rosemary & Thyme, and for playing Miss Trunchbull in the movie Matilda...
), a former midwife, towards the coast to a boat. They are ambushed by an armed gang and Julian is fatally shot. Two police officers stop their car, but Luke kills them, and the group escapes to a safe house.
Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant, and that Julian told her that she should trust only him. Julian had intended to hand Kee over to the "Human Project", a group of scientists dedicated to curing infertility, supposedly based in the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
. However, Luke proposes keeping Kee in England, and she agrees to stay. Later that night, Theo awakens and eavesdrops on a meeting of Luke and other members. He discovers that Julian's death was orchestrated by the Fishes so they could use Kee's baby as a tool to support the coming revolution. Theo wakes Kee and Miriam and they steal a car, escaping to the secluded hideaway of aging hippie Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
), a former political cartoonist
Editorial cartoon
An editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities....
and Theo's friend. A plan is formulated to board the Human Project ship Tomorrow which will arrive offshore from the Bexhill
Bexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England, within the District of Rother. It has a population of approximately 40,000...
refugee camp. Jasper proposes getting Syd (Peter Mullan
Peter Mullan
Peter Mullan is a Scottish actor and film-maker who has been appearing in films since 1990.-Early life:Mullan, the sixth of eight children, was born in Peterhead in the northeast of Scotland, the son of Patricia, a nurse, and Charles Mullan, a lab technician who worked at Glasgow University. He...
), a camp guard, to smuggle them in. The Fishes trail the group to Jasper's hideout, but Theo, Miriam, and Kee get away. Jasper stays behind to try to buy them some time. Before the Fishes arrive, he gives the government-issued suicide drug Quietus
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
to his catatonic wife. Jasper is gunned down by the Fishes in cold blood, horrifying Theo, who witnesses his murder before escaping with Miriam and Kee.
Later, they meet Syd, who transports them to Bexhill as fake prisoners. When Kee begins having contractions
Contraction (childbirth)
-Throughout menstrual cycle:The uterus frequently contracts throughout the entire menstrual cycle, and these contractions have been termed endometrial waves or contractile waves. These appear to involve only the sub-endometrial layer of the myometrium...
on a bus, Miriam distracts a suspicious guard with religious mania, and is taken away. Theo and Kee are taken to the camp, where conditions are appalling, chaotic, and violent. They meet Marichka (Oana Pellea), who provides a room where Kee gives birth to a girl. The next day, Syd locates Theo and Kee, having connected them with the police murders, and threatens to turn them in for a reward. He also informs them that a full-scale war between the refugees, including the Fishes, and the army has begun. The group beat off Syd and escape. Amidst the violent clash between refugees and British troops, the Fishes capture Kee. Theo tracks Kee and her baby to an apartment building which is under heavy fire from the military. The combatants stop fighting momentarily, awed by the presence of a baby, enabling Theo, Kee, and the baby to escape.
Marichka leads them to a boat in a sewer, but refuses to join them. As Theo rows away, he reveals to Kee that he was shot. They then witness a full-scale aerial bombing of Bexhill by the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
, and Kee tells Theo she will name her baby Dylan after Theo's dead son. Theo loses consciousness just as the boat Tomorrow approaches through a thick fog.
Cast
- Clive OwenClive OwenClive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
as Theo Faron, a former activist who was devastated when his child died during a flu pandemic. Theo is the "archetypal everymanEverymanIn literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
" who unwillingly becomes a saviour. Cast in April 2005, Owen spent several weeks collaborating with Cuarón and Sexton about his role. Impressed by Owen's creative insights, Cuarón and Sexton brought him on board as a writer. Back-storyBack-storyA back-story, background story, or backstory is the literary device of a narrative chronologically earlier than, and related to, a narrative of primary interest. Generally, it is the history of characters or other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative's start...
developing Theo's character was removed during the editing process: a scene showing Theo stealing petrol vouchers from work was cut to emphasise visual over verbal information. "Clive was a big help," Cuarón told Variety. "I would send a group of scenes to him, and then I would hear his feedback and instincts." - Julianne MooreJulianne MooreJulianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....
as Julian Taylor. For Julian, Cuarón wanted an actor who had the "credibility of leadership, intelligence, [and] independence". Moore was cast in June 2005. "She is just so much fun to work with," Cuarón told Cinematical. "She is just pulling the rug out from under your feet all the time. You don't know where to stand, because she is going to make fun of you." - Michael CaineMichael CaineSir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
as Jasper Palmer. Caine based Jasper on his experiences with friend John LennonJohn LennonJohn Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
; it was the first time he had portrayed a character who would pass wind or smoke cannabisCannabisCannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
. Cuarón explains, "Once he had the clothes and so on and stepped in front of the mirror to look at himself, his body language started changing. Michael loved it. He believed he was this guy". Michael Phillips of the Chicago TribuneChicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
notices an apparent homageHomageHomage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....
to Schwartz (Mort Mills) in Orson WellesOrson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
' film noir, Touch of EvilTouch of EvilTouch of Evil is a 1958 American crime thriller film, written, directed by, and co-starring Orson Welles. The screenplay was loosely based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson...
(1958). Jasper calls Theo "amigo" — just as Schwartz referred to Ramon Miguel Vargas (Charlton HestonCharlton HestonCharlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
). Jasper's cartoons, seen in his house, were provided by Steve BellSteve Bell (cartoonist)Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
. - Claire-Hope AshiteyClaire-Hope AshiteyClare-Hope Naa K. Ashitey is a British actress of Ghanaian descent. She attended the Centre Stage School of Performing Arts, Southgate...
as Kee, a character who did not appear in the book. The role of an African illegal immigrant was written into the film, based on Cuarón's opinion of the recent single-origin hypothesis of human origins and the status of dispossessed people: "The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We're putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that." - Chiwetel EjioforChiwetel EjioforChiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor, OBE is an English actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his...
as Luke - Pam FerrisPam FerrisPamela Ann "Pam" Ferris is a German-born Welsh actress. She is best known for her starring roles on television as Ma Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, as Laura Thyme in Rosemary & Thyme, and for playing Miss Trunchbull in the movie Matilda...
as Miriam - Peter MullanPeter MullanPeter Mullan is a Scottish actor and film-maker who has been appearing in films since 1990.-Early life:Mullan, the sixth of eight children, was born in Peterhead in the northeast of Scotland, the son of Patricia, a nurse, and Charles Mullan, a lab technician who worked at Glasgow University. He...
as Syd - Charlie HunnamCharlie HunnamCharles Matthew "Charlie" Hunnam is an English actor. He is perhaps best known to UK audiences as Pete Dunham in Green Street Hooligans and as Nathan Maloney in the Channel 4 hit drama Queer as Folk and to US audiences as Vice President of Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original Jackson...
as Patric - Danny HustonDanny Huston-Early life:Huston was born in Rome, Italy. He hails from the illustrious Huston acting and filmmaking dynasty. He is the son of legendary director John Huston, half-brother of actress Anjelica Huston and screenwriter Tony Huston, uncle of actor Jack Huston, stepbrother of Allegra Huston, and...
as Nigel, Theo's cousin and a high ranking government official. Nigel runs a Ministry of ArtsDepartment for Culture, Media and SportThe Department for Culture, Media and Sport is a department of the United Kingdom government, with responsibility for culture and sport in England, and some aspects of the media throughout the whole UK, such as broadcasting and internet....
programme "Ark of the Arts", which "rescues" works of art such as MichelangeloMichelangeloMichelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's DavidDavid (Michelangelo)David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...
, Pablo PicassoPablo PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
's GuernicaGuernica (painting)Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...
and BanksyBanksyBanksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique...
's British Cops Kissing. - Oana Pellea as Marichka
- Paul SharmaPaul SharmaPaul Sharma is an actor and dancer, born in Newport, South Wales, and educated at Bassaleg Comprehensive and Pontypool College.-Television work:Sharma played Vinnay Ramdas in Casualty and then Damon Lynch in 2011, Rajiv in comedy-dramaRoger Roger...
as Ian - Jacek KomanJacek Koman-Early life:Koman was born in Bielsko-Biała, Poland and came to Australia in 1982 with his brother Tomek. They landed in Perth, before heading over to Melbourne, where he began acting again.-Personal life:...
as Tomasz - Miriam KarlinMiriam KarlinMiriam Karlin, OBE was a British actress who worked on screen for over 60 years. She was best known for her role as Paddy in The Rag Trade, a 1960s BBC and 1970s LWT sitcom , especially for her catchphrase "Everybody out!"...
as the elderly German grandmother singing whilst caged. This was Karlin's final film role; she died in 2011.
Hope
Children of Men explores the themes of hopeHope
Hope is the emotional state which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. It is the "feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best" or the act of "look[ing] forward to with desire and reasonable confidence" or...
and faith in the face of overwhelming futility and despair. The film's source, the novel The Children of Men
The Children of Men
The Children of Men is a dystopian novel by P. D. James that was published in 1992. Set in England in 2021, it centres on the results of mass infertility...
by P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.-Life and career:James...
, describes what happens when society is unable to reproduce, using male infertility to explain this problem. In the novel, it is made clear that hope depends on future generations. James writes, "It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all too soon, the very words 'justice,' 'compassion,' 'society,’ 'struggle,' 'evil,' would be unheard echoes on an empty air."
The film switches the infertility from male to female but never explains its cause: environmental destruction and divine punishment are considered. This unanswered question (and others in the film) have been attributed to Cuarón's dislike for expository film: "There's a kind of cinema I detest, which is a cinema that is about exposition and explanations.... It's become now what I call a medium for lazy readers.... Cinema is a hostage of narrative. And I'm very good at narrative as a hostage of cinema." Cuaron's disdain for back-story
Back-story
A back-story, background story, or backstory is the literary device of a narrative chronologically earlier than, and related to, a narrative of primary interest. Generally, it is the history of characters or other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative's start...
and exposition led him to use the concept of female infertility as a "metaphor for the fading sense of hope". The "almost mythical" Human Project is turned into a "metaphor for the possibility of the evolution of the human spirit, the evolution of human understanding." Without dictating how the audience should feel by the end of the film, Cuarón encourages viewers to come to their own conclusions about the sense of hope depicted in the final scenes: "We wanted the end to be a glimpse of a possibility of hope, for the audience to invest their own sense of hope into that ending. So if you're a hopeful person you'll see a lot of hope, and if you're a bleak person you'll see a complete hopelessness at the end."
Contemporary references
Children of Men takes an unconventional approach to the modern action filmAction film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
, using documentary, newsreel style to convey what critic Michael Joshua Rowin describes as "stunning verisimilitude
Verisimilitude
Verisimilitude is the quality of realism in something .-Competing ideas:The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory...
within its mise-en-scène." For Rowin, the film alludes to and resonates with the catastrophic destruction and symbolism of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Rowin, along with film critics Jason Guerrasio and Ethan Alter, observe the film's underlying touchstone of immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
; Alter notes that the film "makes a potent case against the anti-immigrant sentiment
Opposition to immigration
Opposition to immigration is present in most nation-states with immigration, and has become a significant political issue in many countries. Immigration in the modern sense refers to movement of people from one nation-state to another, where they are not citizens. It is important to distinguish...
" popular in modern societies like the United Kingdom and the United States, with Guerrasio describing the film as "a complex meditation on the politics of today".
For Alter and other critics, the structural support and impetus for the contemporary references rests upon the visual nature of the film's exposition
Exposition (plot device)
At the beginning of a narrative, the exposition is the author's providing of some background information to the audience about the plot, characters' histories, setting, and theme. Exposition is considered one of four rhetorical modes of discourse, along with argumentation, description, and narration...
, occurring in the form of imagery as opposed to conventional dialogue. Visually, the refugee camp
Refugee camp
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, or NGOs.Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu...
s in the film intentionally evoke Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
, Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and The Maze
Maze (HM Prison)
Her Majesty's Prison Maze was a prison in Northern Ireland that was used to house paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles from mid-1971 to mid-2000....
. Other popular images appear, such as a sign over the refugee camp reading "Homeland Security". The similarity between the hellish, cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
stylized battle scenes of the film and current news and documentary coverage of the Iraq War, is noted by film critic Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
, describing Cuarón's fictional landscapes as "war zones of extraordinary plausibility".
In the film, refugees are "hunted down like cockroaches," rounded up and put into cages and camps, and even shot, leading film critics like Chris Smith and Claudia Puig to observe symbolic "overtones" and images of the Holocaust. This theme is reinforced in the scene where an elderly refugee woman speaking German is seen detained in a cage, and in the scene where British Homeland Security strips and beats illegal immigrants; a song by The Libertines
The Libertines
The Libertines were an English rock band, formed in London in 1997 by frontmen Carl Barât and Pete Doherty . The band, centred on the song-writing partnership of Barat and Doherty, also included John Hassall and Gary Powell for most of its recording career...
, "Arbeit Macht Frei
Arbeit macht frei
"'" is a German phrase, literally "work makes free," meaning "work sets you free" or "work liberates". The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, including most infamously Auschwitz I, where it was made by prisoners...
", plays in the background. "The visual allusions to the Nazi roundups are unnerving," writes Richard A. Blake. "It shows what people can become when the government orchestrates their fears for its own advantage."
Cuarón explains how he uses this imagery to propagate the theme by cross-referencing fictional and futuristic events with real, contemporary, or historical incidents and beliefs:
In the closing credits
Closing credits
Closing credits or end credits are added at the end of a motion picture, television program, or video game to list the cast and crew involved in the production. They usually appear as a list of names in small type, which either flip very quickly from page to page, or move smoothly across the...
, the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
words "Shantih Shantih Shantih
Shanti
Shanti, Santhi or Shanthi means peace, rest, calmness, tranquility, or bliss.The poet T.S. Eliot, in his poem The Waste Land translated it as "The Peace which passeth understanding."...
" appear as end titles. Writer and film critic Laura Eldred of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
observes that Children of Men is "full of tidbits that call out to the educated viewer". During a visit to his house by Theo and Kee, Jasper says "Shanti, shanti, shanti." Eldred notes that the "shanti" used in the film is also found at the end of an Upanishad
Upanishad
The Upanishads are philosophical texts considered to be an early source of Hindu religion. More than 200 are known, of which the first dozen or so, the oldest and most important, are variously referred to as the principal, main or old Upanishads...
and in the final line of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's poem The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
, a work Eldred describes as "devoted to contemplating a world emptied of fertility: a world on its last, teetering legs". However, "shanti" is also a common beginning and ending to all Hindu prayers, and literally means "peace," referencing the invocation of divine intervention and rebirth through an end to violence.
Religion
Like Virgil'sVirgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, Dante's
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
, and Chaucer's
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
, the crux of the journey in Children of Men lies in what is uncovered along the path rather than the terminus itself. Theo's heroic journey to the south coast mirrors his personal quest for "self-awareness", a journey that takes Theo from "despair to hope".
According to Cuarón, the title of P. D. James' book (The Children of Men) is a Catholic allegory derived from a passage of scripture
Psalm 90
Psalm 90 is the 90th psalm from the Book of Psalms. According to its title, it is attributed to Moses.-Judaism:*Is recited during the Pesukei Dezimra during Shabbat, Yom Tov, and Hoshana Rabbah....
in the Bible. (Psalm 90 (89):3
Psalm 90
Psalm 90 is the 90th psalm from the Book of Psalms. According to its title, it is attributed to Moses.-Judaism:*Is recited during the Pesukei Dezimra during Shabbat, Yom Tov, and Hoshana Rabbah....
of the KJV
King James Version of the Bible
The Authorized Version, commonly known as the King James Version, King James Bible or KJV, is an English translation of the Christian Bible by the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611...
: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.") James refers to her story as a "Christian fable" while Cuarón describes it as "almost like a look at Christianity": "I didn't want to shy away from the spiritual archetypes," Cuarón told Filmmaker Magazine. "But I wasn't interested in dealing with dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
."
This divergence from the original was criticised by some, including Anthony Sacramone of First Things
First Things
First Things is an ecumenical journal focused on creating a "religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society". The journal is inter-denominational and inter-religious, representing a broad intellectual tradition of Christian and Jewish critique of contemporary society...
, who called the film "an act of vandalism", noting the irony of how Cuarón had removed religion from P.D. James' fable, in which morally sterile nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
is overcome by Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
.
The film has been noted for its use of Christian symbolism
Christian symbolism
Christian symbolism invests objects or actions with an inner meaning expressing Christian ideas. Christianity has borrowed from the common stock of significant symbols known to most periods and to all regions of the world. Religious symbolism is effective when it appeals to both the intellect and...
; for example, British terrorists named "Fishes
Ichthys
Ichthys, from Koine Greek: , is the Greek word for "fish"....
" protect the rights of refugees. Opening on Christmas Day in the United States, critics compared the characters of Theo and Kee with Joseph and Mary, calling the film a "modern-day Nativity story". Kee's pregnancy is revealed to Theo in a barn, alluding to the manger of the Nativity scene
Nativity scene
A nativity scene, manger scene, krippe, crèche, or crib, is a depiction of the birth of Jesus as described in the gospels of Matthew and Luke...
, when Theo asks Kee who the father of the baby is she jokingly states she is a virgin, and when other characters discover Kee and her baby, they respond with "Jesus Christ" or the sign of the cross
Sign of the cross
The Sign of the Cross , or crossing oneself, is a ritual hand motion made by members of many branches of Christianity, often accompanied by spoken or mental recitation of a trinitarian formula....
. Also Gabriel Archangel (among others divinities) is invoked in the bus scene; and the fact that an Egyptian woman helps them is a reference to the escape to Egypt.
To highlight these spiritual themes, Cuarón commissioned a 15-minute piece by British composer John Tavener
John Tavener
Sir John Tavener is a British composer, best known for such religious, minimal works as "The Whale", and "Funeral Ikos"...
, a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
whose work resonates with the themes of "motherhood, birth, rebirth, and redemption in the eyes of God." Calling his score a "musical and spiritual reaction to Alfonso's film", snippets of Tavener's "Fragments of a Prayer" contain lyrics in Latin, German and Sanskrit sung by a mezzo-soprano. Words like "mata" (mother), "pahi mam" (protect me), "avatara" (saviour), and "alleluia" appear throughout the film.
Production
The adaptation of the P. D. James novel was originally written by Paul Chart, and later rewritten by Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby. Developed by producers Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, Hilary Shor and Tony Smith, Beacon Pictures brought director Alfonso CuarónAlfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón Orozco is a Mexican film director, screenwriter and film producer, best known for his films Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y tu mamá también, and A Little Princess.- Early life :...
on board in 2001. Cuarón and screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton began rewriting the script after the director completed Y tu mamá también
Y tu mamá también
Y tu mamá también is a 2001 Mexican comedy-drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and co-written by Cuarón and his brother Carlos. The film is a coming-of-age story about two teenage boys taking a road trip with a woman in her late twenties; it stars Mexican actors Diego Luna and Gael García...
. Afraid he would "start second guessing things" Cuarón chose not to read P. D. James' novel, opting to have Sexton read the book while Cuarón himself read an abridged version. Cuarón did not immediately begin production, instead directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a 2004 fantasy film directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the third instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by Chris Columbus, David Heyman and Mark Radcliffe...
. During this period, David Arata rewrote the screenplay and after some back and forth with the director, delivered the draft which secured Clive Owen and sent the film into preproduction. The director's work experience in the United Kingdom exposed him to the "social dynamics of the British psyche", giving him insight into the depiction of "British reality". Cuarón used the film The Battle of Algiers
The Battle of Algiers (film)
The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 war film based on occurrences during the Algerian War against French colonial occupation in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo...
as a model for social reconstruction in preparation for production, presenting the film to Clive Owen as an example of his vision for Children of Men. In order to create a philosophical and social framework for the film, the director read literature by Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, as well as similar works. The film Sunrise
Sunrise (film)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, also known as Sunrise, is a 1927 American silent film directed by German film director F. W. Murnau. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "Die Reise nach Tilsit" by Hermann Sudermann.Sunrise won an Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production...
was also influential.
Location
A Clockwork OrangeA Clockwork Orange (film)
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
helped contribute to the futuristic, yet battered patina of 2027 London. Children of Men was the second film Cuarón made in London, with the director portraying the city as a character itself, shooting single, wide shots of the city. While Cuarón was preparing the film, the London bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
occurred, but the director never considered moving the production. "It would have been impossible to shoot anywhere but London, because of the very obvious way the locations were incorporated into the film," Cuarón told Variety. "For example, the shot of Fleet Street
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
looking towards St. Paul's would have been impossible to shoot anywhere else." Due to these circumstances, the opening terrorist attack scene on Fleet Street was shot one-and-a-half months after the London bombing.
Cuarón chose to shoot some scenes in east London, a location he considered "a place without glamour". The set locations were dressed to make them appear even more run-down; Cuarón says he told the crew "'Let's make it more Mexican'. In other words, we'd look at a location and then say: yes, but in Mexico there would be this and this. It was about making the place look run-down. It was about poverty." He also made use of London's most popular sites, shooting in locations like Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...
and Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Battersea, South London. The station comprises two individual power stations, built in two stages in the form of a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built first in the...
. The power station scene (whose conversion into an art archive is a reference to the Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
), has been compared to Antonioni's
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
Red Desert. Cuarón added a pig balloon to the scene as homage to Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's Animals. Other art works visible in this scene include Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's David
David (Michelangelo)
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...
, Picasso's
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
Guernica
Guernica (painting)
Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...
, and Banksy
Banksy
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique...
's British Cops Kissing. London visual effects companies Double Negative and Framestore worked directly with Cuarón from script to post production, developing effects and creating "environments and shots that wouldn't otherwise be possible".
Style and design
"In most sci-fi epics, special effects substitute for story. Here they seamlessly advance it," observes Colin Covert of Star Tribune. Billboards were designed to balance a contemporary and futuristic appearance as well as easily visualizing what else was occurring in the rest of the world at the time, and cars were made to resemble modern ones at first glance, although a closer look made them seem unfamiliar. Cuarón informed the art department that the film was the "anti-Blade RunnerBlade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
", rejecting technologically advanced proposals and downplaying the science fiction elements of the 2027 setting. The director focused on images reflecting the contemporary period, choosing to have innovative technology in the film's timeline discontinued by 2014. With the future in mind, Cuarón maintained a steady gaze on the present: "We didn't want to be distracted by the future. We didn't want to transport the audience into another reality."
Single-shot sequences
Children of Men used several lengthy single-shot sequencesLong take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
in which extremely complex actions take place. The longest of these are a shot in which Kee gives birth (199 seconds); an ambush on a country road (247 seconds); and a scene in which Theo is captured by the Fishes, escapes, and runs down a street and through a building in the middle of a raging battle (454 seconds). These sequences were extremely difficult to film, although the effect of continuity is sometimes an illusion, aided by CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
effects.
Cuarón had already experimented with long takes in Great Expectations
Great Expectations (1998 film)
Great Expectations is a 1998 contemporary film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft and Chris Cooper. It is known for having moved the setting of the original novel from 1861...
, Y tu mamá también
Y tu mamá también
Y tu mamá también is a 2001 Mexican comedy-drama film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and co-written by Cuarón and his brother Carlos. The film is a coming-of-age story about two teenage boys taking a road trip with a woman in her late twenties; it stars Mexican actors Diego Luna and Gael García...
and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a 2004 fantasy film directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the third instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by Chris Columbus, David Heyman and Mark Radcliffe...
. His style is influenced by the Swiss film Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 is a 1976 Swiss film directed by Alain Tanner and written by Tanner and John Berger. The location of the shooting was Geneva....
, a favorite of Cuarón's. Cuarón reminisces: "I was studying cinema when I first saw [Jonah], and interested in the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
. Jonah was so unflashy compared to those films. The camera keeps a certain distance and there are relatively few close-ups. It's elegant and flowing, constantly tracking, but very slowly and not calling attention to itself." Complicated long-takes were already popular among more accomplished film directors in Mexico, where the technique is known as plano secuencia.
The creation of the single-shot sequences was a challenging, time-consuming process that sparked concerns from the studio. It took fourteen days to prepare for the single shot in which Clive Owen's character searches a building under attack, and five hours for every time they wanted to reshoot it. In the middle of one shot, blood splattered onto the lens, and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki
Emmanuel Lubezki
Emmanuel Lubezki Morgenstern, ASC, AMC , better known as Emmanuel Lubezki, is a Mexican cinematographer, known for his groundbreaking techniques and characteristic style. His nickname is "Chivo".-Early life and career:...
convinced the director to leave it in. According to Owen, "Right in the thick of it are me and the camera operator because we're doing this very complicated, very specific dance which, when we come to shoot, we have to make feel completely random."
Cuarón's initial idea for maintaining continuity
Continuity (fiction)
In fiction, continuity is consistency of the characteristics of persons, plot, objects, places and events seen by the reader or viewer over some period of time...
during the roadside ambush scene was dismissed by production experts as an "impossible shot to do". Fresh from the visual effects-laden Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuarón suggested using computer-generated imagery to film the scene. Lubezki refused to allow it, reminding the director that they had intended to make a film akin to a "raw documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
". Instead, a special camera rig invented by Gary Thieltges
Gary Thieltges
Gary Thieltges is an American cinematographer, owner of Doggicam Systems and best known for inventing camera rigs used on big budget Hollywood films and television shows...
of Doggicam Systems was employed, allowing Cuarón to develop the scene as one extended shot. A vehicle was modified to enable seats to tilt and lower actors out of the way of the camera, and the windshield was designed to tilt out of the way to allow camera movement in and out through the front windscreen. A crew of four, including the DP and camera operator, rode on the roof.
However, the commonly reported statement that the action scenes are continuous shots is not entirely true. Visual effects supervisor Frazer Churchill explains that the effects team had to "combine several takes to create impossibly long shots", where their job was to "create the illusion of a continuous camera move." Once the team was able to create a "seamless blend", they would move on to the next shot. These techniques were important for three continuous shots: the coffee shop explosion in the opening shot, the car ambush, and the battlefield scene. The coffee shop scene was composed of "two different takes shot over two consecutive days"; the car ambush was shot in "six sections and at four different locations over one week and required five seamless digital transitions"; and the battlefield scene "was captured in five separate takes over two locations". Churchill and the Double Negative
Double Negative (VFX)
Double Negative is a British full-service visual effects/computer animation company located in Soho, London. The company was set up in 1998 with a team of 30 staff and has since grown to over 900 staff, making it one of Europe's largest provider of visual effects for film.In 2009, Double Negative...
team created over 160 of these types of effects for the film. In an interview with Variety, Cuarón acknowledged this nature of the "single-shot" action sequences: "Maybe I'm spilling a big secret, but sometimes it's more than what it looks like. The important thing is how you blend everything and how you keep the perception of a fluid choreography through all of these different pieces."
Tim Webber of VFX house Framestore CFC
Framestore CFC
Framestore is a British Oscar-winning visual effects company based near Oxford Street in London. Formed in 1986, it acquired the Computer Film Company in 1997. The company works across several different areas of the media: feature films, commercials, music videos, feature animation and digital.The...
was responsible for the three-and-a-half minute single take of Kee giving birth, helping to choreograph and create the CG effects of the childbirth. Cuarón had originally intended to use an animatronic baby as Kee's child with the exception of the childbirth scene. In the end, two takes were shot, with the second take concealing Claire-Hope Ashitey's legs, replacing them with prosthetic legs. Cuarón was pleased with the results of the effect, and returned to previous shots of the baby in animatronic form, replacing them with Framestore's computer-generated
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
baby.
Sound
Cuarón uses sound and music to bring the fictional world of social unrest and infertility to life. A creative yet restrained combination of rock, pop, electronic music, hip-hop and classical music replaces the typical film scoreFilm score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
. The mundane sounds of traffic, barking dogs, and advertisements follow the character of Theo through London, East Sussex and Kent, producing what Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
writer Kevin Crust calls an "urban audio rumble". For Crust, the music comments indirectly on the barren world of Children of Men: Deep Purple
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
's version of "Hush" blaring from Jasper's car radio becomes a "sly lullaby for a world without babies" while King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
's "The Court of the Crimson King
The Court of the Crimson King
"The Court of the Crimson King" is the fifth and final track from the British progressive rock band King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King. It was also released as a single. It reached #80 on the US charts, and is the band's only charting single in the United...
" make a similar allusion with their lyrics, "...three lullabies in an ancient tongue".
Amongst a genre-spanning selection of electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, a remix of Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin
Richard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
's "Omgyjya Switch 7", which includes additional samples of screams not present on the original can be heard during the scene in Jasper's house, where Jasper's "Strawberry Cough" (a potent, strawberry-flavoured blend of marijuana) is being sampled. During a conversation between the two men, Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
's "Life in a Glasshouse" plays in the background.
A number of dubstep
Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in south London, England. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals"....
tracks, most notably Anti-War Dub by Digital Mystikz
Digital Mystikz
Digital Mystikz are a dubstep production duo from the South London suburb of Norwood. Along with Loefah and Sgt. Pokes, they operate the DMZ record label and host the influential bimonthly nightclub DMZ, held at the Mass club complex in Brixton, London...
, as well as tracks by Kode9
Kode9
Kode9 is a London-based electronic music artist, DJ, and owner of the Hyperdub record label. An MC, The Spaceape, is a frequent collaborator...
& The Space Ape and Pressure are also featured.
For the Bexhill scenes during the film's second half, the director makes use of silence and cacophonous sound effect
Sound effect
For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
s such as the firing of automatic weapons and loudspeakers directing the movement of "fugees" (illegal immigrants). Here, classical music by George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
, and Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
's "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is a musical composition for 52 string instruments, composed in 1960 by Krzysztof Penderecki , which took third prize at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Composers' Competition in Katowice in 1960...
" complements the chaos of the refugee camp. Throughout the film, John Tavener
John Tavener
Sir John Tavener is a British composer, best known for such religious, minimal works as "The Whale", and "Funeral Ikos"...
's Fragments of a Prayer is used as a spiritual motif to explain and interpret the story without the use of narrative.
A few times during the film, a loud, ringing tone evocative of tinnitus
Tinnitus
Tinnitus |ringing]]") is the perception of sound within the human ear in the absence of corresponding external sound.Tinnitus is not a disease, but a symptom that can result from a wide range of underlying causes: abnormally loud sounds in the ear canal for even the briefest period , ear...
is heard. This sound generally coincides with the death of a major character (Julian, Jasper) and is referred to by Julian herself, who describes the tones as the last time you'll ever hear that frequency. In this way, then, the loss of the tones is symbolic of the loss of the characters.
Release
Children of Men had its world premiere at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival63rd Venice International Film Festival
The 63rd Venice International Film Festival, held in Venice, Italy, was opened on 30 August 2006 with Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia and was closed on 9 September 2006...
on 3 September 2006. On 22 September 2006, the film debuted at #1 in the United Kingdom with $2.4 million in 368 screens. It debuted in a limited release of 16 theaters in the United States on 22 December 2006, expanding to more than 1,200 theaters on 5 January 2007. As of 6 February 2008, Children of Men had grossed $69,612,678 worldwide, with $35,552,383 of the revenue generated in the United States.
Critical reception
The film received very positive reviews. According to the review tallying website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, Children of Men received a 93% overall approval out of 196 reviews from critics, and on Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, the film has a rating of 84 based on 36 reviews.
Dana Stevens
Dana Stevens (critic)
Dana Shawn Stevens is a movie critic at Slate magazine. She is also a regular on the magazine's weekly cultural podcast the Culture Gabfest.-Life and career:Stevens grew up in Scarsdale, New York...
of Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
called it "the herald of another blessed event: the arrival of a great director by the name of Alfonso Cuarón." Stevens hailed the film's extended car chase and battle scenes as "two of the most virtuoso single-shot chase sequences I've ever seen." Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the film a "superbly directed political thriller", raining accolades on the long chase scenes. "Easily one of the best films of the year" said Ethan Alter of Film Journal International, with scenes that "dazzle you with their technical complexity and visual virtuosity." Jonathan Romney of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
praised the accuracy of Cuarón's portrait of the United Kingdom, but he criticised some of the film's futuristic scenes as "run-of-the-mill future fantasy." Film Comment
Film Comment
Film Comment is an arts and culture magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, of which it is the official publication. Film Comment features critical reviews and in-depth analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world...
's Critics' Poll of the best films of 2006 ranked the film #19 while the 2006 Readers' Poll ranked it #2. On their list of the best movies of 2006, The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
, the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, Slate and The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
placed the film at number-one. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
ranked the film seventh on its end-of-the-decade, top ten list, saying, "Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian 2006 film reminded us that adrenaline-juicing action sequences can work best when the future looks just as grimy as today."
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
ranked this #2 on his list of best films of the decade, writing:
"I thought director Alfonso Cuarón's film of P.D. James' futuristic political-fable novel was good when it opened in 2006. After repeated viewings, I know Children of Men is indisputably great... No movie this decade was more redolent of sorrowful beauty and exhilarating action. You don't just watch the car ambush scene (pure camera wizardry) — you live inside it. That's Cuarón's magic: He makes you believe."
According to Metacritic's analysis of the most often and notably noted films on the best-of-the-decade lists, Children of Men is considered the eleventh-greatest film of the 2000s.
Top ten lists
The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists as one of the best films of 2006:- 1st – Ann Hornaday, The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
- 1st – Keith Phipps, The A.V. ClubThe A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
- 1st – Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
- 1st – Tasha Robinson, The A.V. ClubThe A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
- 2nd (Of The Decade) - Peter TraversPeter TraversPeter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
, Rolling StoneRolling StoneRolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J... - 2nd – Ray Bennett, The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterFormerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
- 2nd – Scott Tobias, The A.V. ClubThe A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
- 3rd – Roger EbertRoger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, Chicago Sun-TimesChicago Sun-TimesThe Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city... - 4th – Kevin Crust, Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
- 4th – Wesley MorrisWesley MorrisWesley Morris is a film critic at The Boston Globe where he reviews films alongside Ty Burr. Morris and Burr also make regular appearances on NECN to discuss the latest films and do the weekly Take Two film review video series on Boston.com...
, The Boston GlobeThe Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993... - 5th – Rene Rodriguez, The Miami HeraldThe Miami HeraldThe Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
- 6th – Manohla DargisManohla DargisManohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization... - 7th – EmpireEmpire (magazine)Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
- 7th – Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterFormerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
- 7th – Ty Burr, The Boston GlobeThe Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
- 8th – Kenneth TuranKenneth TuranKenneth Turan is an American film critic and Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.-Background:...
, Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
(tied with Pan's LabyrinthPan's LabyrinthPan's Labyrinth is a 2006 Spanish Spanish-language dark fantasy film, written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. It was produced and distributed by the Mexican film company Esperanto Films...
) - 8th – Scott Foundas, LA WeeklyLA WeeklyLA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
(tied with L'Enfant (The Child)) - 8th – Scott Foundas, The Village VoiceThe Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
General top ten
- Dana Stevens, SlateSlate (magazine)Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
- Liam Lacey and Rick Groen, The Globe and MailThe Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
- Peter Rainer, The Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
- Mark KermodeMark KermodeMark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...
, BBC Radio 5 Live
Awards
P. D. JamesP. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL , commonly known as P. D. James, is an English crime writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords, most famous for a series of detective novels starring policeman and poet Adam Dalgliesh.-Life and career:James...
, who was reported to be pleased with the film, and the screenwriters of Children of Men were awarded the 19th annual USC Scripter Award for the screen adaptation of the novel; Howard Rodman, chair of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Writing Division, described the book-to-screen adaptation as "writing and screen writing of the highest order.", although Gerschatt, writing in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, noted that the screenplay bore very little resemblance to the novel, in the gender of the baby, and the character who was pregnant (Julian, in the novel) and the death of Theo, who in fact, did not die in the novel. The film was also nominated in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay
Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
at the 79th Academy Awards
79th Academy Awards
The 79th Academy Awards ceremony , honored the best films of 2006 and took place on February 25, 2007 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on ABC. Ellen DeGeneres hosted the ceremony for the first time. The producer was Laura Ziskin. The announcers were Don LaFontaine and Gina Tuttle.The nominees were...
.
Children of Men also obtained Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki
Emmanuel Lubezki
Emmanuel Lubezki Morgenstern, ASC, AMC , better known as Emmanuel Lubezki, is a Mexican cinematographer, known for his groundbreaking techniques and characteristic style. His nickname is "Chivo".-Early life and career:...
) and Best Film Editing (Alfonso Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez). The British Academy of Film and Television Arts
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
nominated Children of Men for Best Visual Effects and honored the film with awards for Best Cinematography
BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
-Best Cinematography - Colour:* 1963 - From Russia with Love - Ted Moore** Nine Hours to Rama – Arthur Ibbetson** The Running Man – Robert Krasker** Sammy Going South – Erwin Hillier** The Scarlet Blade – Jack Asher...
and Best Production Design
BAFTA Award for Best Production Design
List of winners of the BAFTA Awards from 1964 to the present in the category "Best Production Design".-1960s:Best British Production Design - Black and White1964: Dr...
at the 60th British Academy Film Awards
60th British Academy Film Awards
The 60th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts took place on 11 February 2007, and honoured the best films of 2006....
. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won the feature film award for Best Cinematography at the 21st American Society of Cinematographers Awards
American Society of Cinematographers
The American Society of Cinematographers is an educational, cultural, and professional organization. It is not a labor union, and it is not a guild. Membership is by invitation and is extended only to directors of photography and special effects experts with distinguished credits in the film...
. The Australian Cinematographers Society
Australian Cinematographers Society
The Australian Cinematographers Society is an Australian organisation established in 1958 for cinematographers to meet and discuss the issues that affected them...
also awarded Lubezki the 2007 International Award for Cinematography for Children of Men.
The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films bestowed the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
The Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film is a Saturn Award given to the best film in the science fiction genre by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.-Winners:-External links:*...
on Children of Men, and it received the nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention.
Children of Men was nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.
Home media
The HD DVD and DVD were released in Europe on 15 January 2007 and in the United States on 27 March 2007. Extras include a half-hour documentary by director Alfonso Cuarón entitled "The Possibility of HopeThe Possibility of Hope
The Possibility of Hope is a 2007 documentary included as an extra in Children of Men Special Edition DVD.-Synopsis:A look at different matters of the world such as immigration, global warming and capitalism through the eyes of scientists and philosophers.-External links:* Children of Men* at...
". The documentary explores the intersection between the film's themes and reality with a critical analysis by eminent scholars: the Slovenian sociologist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...
, environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
futurist James Lovelock
James Lovelock
James Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling...
, sociologist Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen
Saskia Sassen is a Dutch sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is currently Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Sassen coined the term global city...
, human geographer Fabrizio Eva, cultural theorist Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 with his wife Nancy Huston and their two children, writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory....
, and philosopher and economist John N. Gray; "Under Attack" features a demonstration of the innovative techniques required for the car chase and battle scenes; Clive Owen and Julianne Moore discuss their characters in "Theo & Julian"; "Futuristic Design" opens the door on the production design and look of the film; "Visual Effects" shows how the digital baby was created. Deleted scenes are included. The film was released on Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
in the United States on 26 May 2009.