#91: Children of Men [dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2006]
The birth of a new style of filmmaking, for better and worse
I tried so hard to keep Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men off the list. I desperately wanted to avoid regurgitating the work every single other cinephile youtuber and essayist in heaping praise on the now overexposed political thriller. I considered other movies to put in its place, hoping for something to be more meaningful or important to me for the purposes of this exercise. In the end, though, I couldn’t do it. Yes, this movie has been lauded by nearly every contemporary film critic. Yes, it is likely the genesis for a generation of directors’ (and filmgoers’) obsession with naturalist dystopias and extreme long-take set pieces regardless of whether or not they serve an actual purpose or are the best way to film the sequence for maximum impact. Yes, it’s themes and ideas have only become more overwrought and obvious since it’s 2006 release. And, yes, it is also undeniably a masterpiece of near-future sci-fi allegory that was well ahead of its time and still takes my breath away to this day.
It would be great if I could say I first saw Children of Men play in theaters, but that is unfortunately not the case though not for lack of trying. I had seen numerous trailers for it throughout the year, but even after expanding from its limited release and a plethora of critical acclaim, there were few if any showings near me in Jacksonville, FL. For months I’d been hyped for Alfonso Cuarón’s follow up to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, at that point the only one of his films I had seen. I was riveted by the premise, a near-future world where humans had lost the ability to procreate and a disillusioned man having the shepherd the last pregnant woman on earth to safety. But by the time it was out of theaters I had not had the opportunity to watch. It took until later that year, my first semester of undergrad, when I saw the DVD on a shelf during a Blockbuster run with my roommates. The four of us each had a pick for the week, and that became mine. After we watched it that night we sat in silence, completely in awe. It’s important to remember that feeling whenever I roll my eyes at yet another cinephile placing the movie atop their pedestal.
If I love it so much why am I so reluctant? The truth is that Children of Men would not be a touchstone film for so many people were it not brilliant. It might be a cliché movie to cite now but that shouldn’t take away from the greatness contained within its 109 minutes. If anything, I’m more annoyed with the numerous movies and TV shows that have aped so many of the best aspects of it rather than the actual film itself. The grimy, grey, decaying dystopia we see in nearly every sci-fi story these days can trace their origins to the production design here. The obsession and overuse of highly choreographed single-shot set pieces (with or without hidden edits) are all attempting to recreate the magic Cuarón achieved in this movie over and over and over again. I’m not annoyed with Children of Men so much as I am with the mimicry it induced in numerous 2010s productions. But even there I find a great compliment – Children of Men effectively set the template for action, drama, and sci-fi films of the last decade and yet it came out four years before it started. It took that long for anyone else to figure out how to pull it off.
This might sound like a negative, but a thing I love about Children of Men is how obvious Cuarón is with the symbolism and allegory at play throughout. Every single frame in the film, brilliantly shot by master Director of Photography, Emmanuel Lubezki, contains multitudes and layers that can and should (and have) be dissected a million times over. If while watching you get the sense that you are supposed to be comparing what you see on screen with an aspect of today’s society that is because you absolutely are. If I were a less charitable person I could describe Children of Men as “Baby’s First Art Film”.
The opening scene introduces us to this approach instantly, as we see a throng of people crowding a coffee shop obsessively watching the news (the world’s youngest person, Baby Diego, has died) while Theo Faron (Clive Owen) enters, orders his coffee, and leaves without paying much attention to the TV. When he goes outside we see others looking up at large screens and floating chyrons absorbing the news while Theo, instead, spikes his coffee with a few shots of liquor. The world around him is dirty, grey, decaying. This is a future where no human child has been born in over eighteen years – the palpable sense of doom permeates every corner of the celluloid frame. He begins to drink when a bomb explodes from inside the shop he was just in – his apathy towards the state of the world is what ultimately saved him from death. Subtle.
The rest of the movie plays out with similar in-your-face meaning, as if Cuarón is attempting to shake us awake and force us to confront the themes he is exploring. Rarely do we move down the street without the Lubezki letting the camera wander away from the characters to show the numerous blocks of prisoners (all undocumented immigrants or political dissidents) in cages that line the streets, each time escalating in the violence inflicted on them. The televisions tell us that only Britain has stood tall amidst the global chaos in the wake of species infertility, and the news reels look like every western propaganda broadcast touting the values of our society over the dangerous foreigners. Theo visits his cousin Nigel (Danny Huston), a high-ranking member of the Ministry of Arts and we get a glimpse of the seats of power, safely behind fences and guards, with green grass and blue skies and “civilized” behavior. Even the ministry is adorned with various pieces of art they’ve saved and reclaimed for no future people in particular, including a dinner table overlooked by Picasso’s “Guernica” (a recurring character in these essays).
If everything was this on-the-surface, however, it would not be worth revisiting the film as often as I have. There are plenty of world details that are far more subtextual and expand even further the ideas being discussed. Rather than make another list, I want to focus on one that I noticed for the first time on my most recent screening, the one I watched before writing this. It’s mentioned that Theo has money problems, and we can see why when he’s told to meet a member of the Fishes, a revolutionary group run by his ex-partner, Juian (Julianne Moore), at a dog track. Rather than wait by the bulletin board or the bar, Theo places bets on the races. We’ve been told that humans have been infertile for nearly a generation but greyhounds only live an average of twelve years. Earlier, when Theo spends an evening with his mentor Jasper (Michael Caine), the pair are joined by a dog and a cat. Later on Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) reveals her miraculous pregnancy among a group of dairy cows, who have a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years. Humans may be on the brink of extinction, but the rest of Earth’s living things will continue once we’re gone.
Children of Men was released in 2006, but it’s impossible to not find even more to compare our world to in 2024. Almost twenty years later we are still having political discussions about how to handle refugees and undocumented immigrants, a growing issue in the wake of civil wars, global warming, and an unending pandemic (it is implied in Children that a flu pandemic either caused or triggered the mass-infertility). Nigel tells Theo that he finds that it’s best to just not think about the state of the world to maintain his sanity, and it’s impossible to pretend like many in positions of power around the world would rather pretend climate change isn’t as bad as every meteorological metric tells us it is. Twenty years later, our world is far closer to the one Children of Men warns us about than it was at its premier.
Cuarón & Co. aren’t exactly pulling this blunt approach from nowhere. The book the movie is based on, “The Children of Men” by P.D. James, is explicitly a modern religious text. James, herself, has described her novel as a “Christian fable”, and the prose is practically as obvious as what’s on screen. Following a very different storyline than the film, the novel tells a of a more biblical power struggle as Theo helps deliver the first new child into the world, a boy and seemingly a messiah, while ascending to become the leader of the UK and guide those left to a better future. The point of the book is to tell the tale about how our world will be saved once we have reached our lowest point, although the ending could still be read as ambiguous and bleak.
The film uses this idea as a jumping off point to instead explore different themes, chiefly around growing xenophobia, rising global crises, and the hemorrhaging number of people willing to sacrifice for the greater good. If the book is a fable then the movie is it’s inverse – a warning. Everyone who isn’t Theo or Jasper is religious in their own way, believing whole-heartedly in something they cannot prove nor break free from. The Fishes believe that they are the only ones who can save Britain from itself, while the British government believes it’s the only protection for the last bits of civilization and dignity. The refugees believe that, despite their conditions, the camps in England are better than the horrors back home. Even the mythical Human Project believes that they can provide the last best hope for the future of humanity. What makes Kee unique is that her religion is not any of those, but purely a belief in Julian which she transfers to Theo, the one man Julian trusted.
The journey Theo goes on while transporting Kee to salvation is not from atheist to believer, but instead from hopeless to hopeful. We get glimpses of his younger, more radical and idealistic days, fighting alongside Julian against a rapidly oppressive British government. We also learn, and are reminded repeatedly, that the two of them had a son named Dylan who died tragically young and after it was too late to try for another. It broke them completely, leading Julian to dive further into radical resistance and Theo into a catatonic state of apathy. That it is Kee’s impossible pregnancy that brings the two back together again isn’t ironic but fitting – this is their second chance. Kee recognizes this immediately, even before hearing the story of the long-deceased child. She believed in Julian who believed in Theo – all she had to do was trust a man who didn’t trust himself.
Where Christ is a theme in Children is not in the birth of a supposed messiah, but in the way people along the way continue to sacrifice themselves both for the baby and the greater good. Jesus Christ himself is an odd Christ figure, sacrificing himself in abstract as if that could absolve an entire species of its sins (maybe he could, maybe he couldn’t and that is the crux of the faith). Christ figures in literature and film, rather, are simply those who are willing to sacrifice something of themselves, usually their life, in order to save others from a worse fate. Think Neo at the end of The Matrix Revolutions, Jack Torrance in Stephen King’s “The Shining” (egregiously altered for the movie), or Gandalf in “The Fellowship of the Ring” (and his resurrection in “The Two Towers”).
As Kee makes her way to the Bexhill refugee camp to meet with the Human Project ship (aptly named “Tomorrow”), there are many who sacrifice themselves in order to ensure her and her child’s safety. Julian is the first we see, though her sacrifice is unplanned she would have been more than willing to do so – her instructions to Kee to trust Theo indicate she accepted her death was a possibility. Jasper, who we gather was preparing to go as soon as his sickly wife finally passed, lets himself be killed as a distraction allowing Theo and Kee a chance to escape. Miriam, the midwife who has been travelling with the pair with the intention of aiding the birth lets herself be taken by guards, presumably to be executed, ensuring the others safe passage into Bexhill. Even the Romani family who aids them inside the camp lay down their lives in hopes it will allow Kee and her child to reach their destination. The only one who keeps holding on with her is Theo.
And now, after all that, it’s time to finally discuss the long takes.
The thing that Alfonso Cuarón understands far better than his contemporaries and imitators is that there needs to be a narrative purpose for long-take set pieces. It’s perfectly fine to show off your talent as a director (and, of course, the talents of every collaborator on the project such as Lubezki), but if there isn’t a greater reason for presenting a scene that way then it doesn’t need to be done. For me, spectacle can only wow the first time around – it is the addition of meaning that elevates the techniques at play. Otherwise I find myself feeling empty or annoyed as a viewer. Like anything else, long takes are a technique and a choice. In all forms of art, techniques and choices should be considered and the best artists are those who understand why they do the things they do.
For example, Sam Mendes’ 1917 is one of the most technically impressive films of the last decade (and one of the many obvious descendants of Children). I first watched it in a packed theater and was wowed by the illusory two unbroken scenes that comprise the picture’s run, breathless as I left my seat. But since then the magic is gone. I’ve watched it twice since, and both times I found myself wishing there were edits. The unbroken nature of the action began to drag as it dilated time. I found that I had a better experience when I created edits for myself by looking down at my phone for a second. If Mendes’ goal was to make me feel more in touch with the danger of war instead I felt a remove.
I’ve heard filmmakers like Mendes and Alejandro Iñárritu talk about how they use long takes as a way to better enter the mindset of the perspective character – that it is the way we all experience life. I understand this thought process, but the problem is that it is a mistake. The scenes are not shot in first person but third, and as a result we see not only what our protagonist sees but the entire world happening around them. Without edits filmmakers remove the opportunity to use the Kuleshov effect, the age-old cinematic language that actually puts us into their perspective with quick cuts to show sightlines and build suspense. The result is objective rather than subjective like they are intending.
The most cited long takes among cinephiles, however, are the Copacabana sequence in Scorsese’s Goodfellas and the opening tracking shot in P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights. The first of these certainly has subjective elements, allowing us as viewers to experience the same whirlwind that Karen feels as Henry brings her into his world, but both are ultimately using the long take as table setting in order to give us a glimpse into character interaction and the rube-goldberg aspects of two different underground worlds. It is the objectivity that is the point. Cuarón, to his immense, credit, uses the same techniques for the same reasons. Every one of the long-take sequences in Children of Men is holding the camera on Theo’s action not to put us into his head, but to gives us glimpses into how the world around him is interacting as well and refusing to let us leave.
While there are multiple sequences throughout Children where the camera holds for an exceptionally long time – the average shot length of the film is just over 16 seconds whereas the mean for films in 2006 was roughly 4 seconds – when people reference the long-takes they are usually referring to one of two scenes. The first is a claustrophobic mob attack from the inside of a moving car, that turns effecting character beats into a horrific escape that leaves Julian dead and the Fishes, seemingly, lost. The second is a bravura six-minute chase through an increasingly devolving battle as refugees begin to band together, the Fishes infiltrate the camp, and the British army hunts everyone down. This all happens around Theo and Kee as they attempt to get to the boat they’ll use to find the Tomorrow. To add to the massive amounts of tension the entire sequence is scored to Krzysztof Penderecki’s harrowing “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima”, signaling we are nearing the end of days. My jaw literally dropped for both scenes when I first saw Children of Men, and it hit the floor again on my last viewing. And as incredible as they both are, they also are not the long-takes I want to write about – they’ve been discussed enough.
Rather, there are two other oners that stand out to me more for their subtlety than their virtuosity. The first is actually a scene I’ve discussed earlier in this piece – the opening scene with the coffee shop and the bomb. You could argue this isn’t a true oner, as it contains a quick cut to a television midway through (hello again, Kuleshov), and it’s significantly shorter than the other two I’ve mentioned at just two minutes. In reality, it’s closer to what Tony Zhang referred to as the Spielberg oner – a longer take, sometimes with a quick insert to give an editor some breathing room, that uses the increased shot time to combine a variety of composed shots rather than display a variety of actions. Here, Cuarón isn’t trying to wow us with talent, but use the lengthy shot to better illustrate the way Theo moves through the world around him. We begin on a group shot of people in a café, transition into a tracking shot of Theo walking down the street, and then move the camera around to give us a solo shot of Theo drinking his coffee with the shop now in the background to better see the explosion. The impact of the moment just wouldn’t be the same with a more traditionally edited scene.
The second, and my favorite scene in the film, is the birth of the child. We know it is inevitable – Kee has been experiencing contractions for hours and her water already broke. We also know that Theo will have to be the one to help deliver the baby, as Miriam has since sacrificed herself. What we don’t know is that the camera will trap us with the characters as soon as they enter the eventual delivery room. We start at a distance, with both Theo and Kee in the shot, but slowly push in as the birth gets nearer and nearer. We get close in on Theo’s face, as he focusses on aiding Kee however he can, giving her instruction. We whip over to Kee and recognize her pain and determination to finish the job. We see the child born into Theo’s arms – it’s a girl – and once we’ve held our breath for half a second the baby begins to wail and sighs of relief play across both Kee and Theo’s faces. The camera pulls away and we in the audience can now exhale. That’s how you do a long-take properly.
At risk of being redundant, the most remarkable thing about Children of Men to me, beyond the technical achievements or the effortlessly incredible acting, is the way the story being told so thoroughly inverts the Christ myth that the source material was riffing on. Where the book tells the story of a boy born as a miracle and helping usher the world into a potentially better future, the film is about a girl born in secret and being the hope that we as humans might yet find a way to survive and heal. Where the Christ of myth sacrificed himself for our salvation, so, too, do Julian, Jasper, Miriam, and many others. The villains of the movie, ultimately, are those who will not sacrifice themselves for the future of humanity and, instead, would rather use the miracle for their own gain.
This, to me, is the most fascinating aspect of the adaptation. I don’t necessarily read Cuarón’s story choices as a rebuke of the novel – P.D. James herself was reportedly pleased with the film and the book can easily be read as having a negative ending – but it is certainly an curious inversion of the original tale being told. We learn not long after Julian’s death that the riot was staged in order to assassinate her and Theo, succeeding with the first. Julian wanted to deliver Kee and her child to the Human Project in hopes that a cure for infertility could be found. The rest of the Fishes, now led by Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), would rather use the resulting baby as a rallying cry to band together as many dissidents as possible, ideally leading to an overthrow of the government. Later on the guard who helps Theo and Kee into the refugee camp, Syd (Peter Mullan), tries to steal the baby for himself, knowing he could use it for financial or professional gain. Both Luke and Syd will die in their attempts, not as a sacrifice but as a punishment. To Cuarón, the idea of using this miracle birth for anything other than helping humanity regain its fertility and future is the worst sin imaginable, punishable by death.
This is why the true Christ figure, and the greatest sacrifice in the story, is Theo. When we meet him, he is a man torn by grief and apathetic to the future. In many ways, he follows the true heroes journey as popularized by Joseph Campbell, hitting every major step along the way. He refuses the call to action, agreeing only because he needs the money. It is not until Kee reveals her pregnancy to him that he understands the gravity of the situation and, without telling us directly, resolves to help. The further away from London he gets the more we begin to see the Theo we heard about from Julian and Jasper, the passionate and capable father and hero, a man hellbent on saving what shred of humanity is left after nearly two decades of despair. He can only die once his task is complete, and when he reaches the buoy he knows it is – he’s done all he can do. The reward for his sacrifice is that Kee tells him she picked a name for her daughter – it’s the last thing he will ever hear. She’s decided to name her Dylan.
As I said, my frustration with Children of Men is not with the film itself but instead with what it inspired. The truth is that there really weren’t any mainstream, big-budget movies being made in 2006 that looked anything like this. Directors weren’t in an arms race to see who could have the longer or more choreographed oner, our screens weren’t yet bombarded by a flood of grey dystopian futures, and handheld documentary style filmmaking wasn’t a widespread technique among mainstream movies. So much of what makes Children exceptional is what also annoys me in its imitators. Cuarón wasn’t looking to reinvent cinema, but rather take the style he helped pioneer in independent films (his main contribution being 2001’s Y tu mama Tambien) and translate it to a studio picture. He’d proven, with Prisoner of Azkaban (itself the third film in a longform Christ allegory), that he could handle a multi-million dollar budget from Warner Bros. That Universal agreed to let him follow that up with a smaller but still massive purse is what every filmmaker dreams of, and he succeeded with flying colors.
There aren’t many cinephiles who wouldn’t name Children of Men as one of their favorites. It’s been pored over in a variety of commentary media over the last eighteen years that I was worried that I wouldn’t feel that I had anything new or interesting to say. There aren’t many movies that have inspired this amount of praise from my generation of fans, and that is an achievement in and of itself. There are times when it feels overdone to recommend it to someone, and yet as soon as I finish re-watching it’s exactly what want to do. It’s a tough watch, to be sure, but a rewarding one.
The career trajectory that those involved took are all fascinating. Clive Owen, here giving what I think is his best ever performance, never quite reached these heights again. He has found a new stride in some excellent work on TV, however, and remains wonderful in everything he does. Chiwetel Ejiofor was nominated for an Oscar six years later for 12 Years a Slave, and Julianne Moore would go on to win one in 2015. Emmanuel Lubezki, a compatriot with Cuarón since their time making independent movies in Mexico back in the ‘80s, is now the first and only person to win three Oscars in a row for Best Cinematography. First for Cuarón’s next film, Gravity, followed by two Iñarittu movies, Birdman and The Revenant. For Alfonso, he has only directed two films since (the aforementioned Gravity and the semi-autobiographical Roma), winning the Oscar for Best director with both. In many ways this makes Children of Men both a relic and an artifact, a masterpiece a few years ahead of its time. It is somehow simultaneously the culmination of years of hard work and the birth of a new era, a brighter future for nearly all involved.