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The Dartmouth
July 12, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Cuaron's 'Children' captivates

The year is 2027, and the world's youngest person, 18-year-old "Baby Diego," has been killed. This inauspicious opening is the introduction to Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men," a dark vision of a world in which the human race has lost the ability to reproduce.

What immediately turns me off about sci-fi movies like this one is the tremendous suspension of disbelief that their conceits require. This is a film that asks from its viewer the kind of faith that the empty world it introduces can no longer possess. But if you're willing to watch quietly without mental protestation, "Children of Men" becomes something poignant, and maybe, if you really buy into it, something thrilling.

Clive Owen is Theo Faron, a former activist whose life has lost its meaning. One of the few remaining inhabitants of a doomed world, Theo wanders through a bleak landscape of drudgery and sorrow, its heavy pallor broken only by the explosion of bombs and the screaming of Britain's illegal immigrants -- "fugees" -- harbored in cages. A departure from the normal cinematic expression of "the future," "Children of Men" lacks the metallic trappings and robots common to its genre. Instead, it paints a cynical portrait of an uncomfortably familiar world.

Just as I was about to write off "Children of Men" as a fundamentally depressing, left-tipped horror story about the downfall of modern society, something unexpected happened. Early in the plot, Theo is captured, hurled into a van by men in black ski masks and brought to the hide-out of his ex-girlfriend, Julian (Julianne Moore), the leader of a terrorist group committed to protesting the abhorrent treatment of immigrants. Julian needs Theo's connections to procure transit papers for Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a young "fugee." Kee, miraculously, is pregnant.

Predictably, Theo takes up the mantle of Kee's protector and spends the remainder of the film protecting the human race's last hope. It's hard to ignore the glaring Christian references inherent in the thematic fiber of the plot, but Cuaron's direction manages to hover quietly within the realm of allusion, presenting the story's religious imagery with admirable subtlety. One example is the wide-eyed Kee, who is cloaked throughout much of the film in a brown woolen cape befitting of a 21st century Virgin Mary.

The film plays smartly with the conventions of Hollywood religiosity and projects a refreshing (if slightly awkward) sense of self-mockery, cutting through much of its overwhelming seriousness. In one memorably comic moment, Kee insists that she is a virgin and erupts with laughter at Theo's panic-stricken visage. It turns out that she was a prostitute.

Another welcome source of comic relief is Michael Caine, who is fabulously entertaining as Jasper, an old friend of Theo's living deep in the woods. In the company of Jasper and later, Julian, Clive Owen is at his most interesting -- when his pained grimace erupts into a broad smile, we are given a glimpse of the humanity for which this fictional world pines.

As a director, Alfonso Cuaron has a powerful visual sense, which he applies universally to each moment, light or tragic. Juxtaposing image after lasting image -- sun rays glinting off a steel roof, ravaged masterpieces of art in private white rooms, armed soldiers hearkening to the almost-forgotten wail of a newborn baby -- Cuaron has created a film of brilliant contrasts. "Children of Men" is disturbing, not always pleasurable (or even believable), but nevertheless impressively conceived.