‘Children of Men’ is lazy, simple-minded
Children of Men has played in area theaters since early January. It is one of the most widely acclaimed films of 2006, was nominated for a couple of Oscars, and I hate it with nearly every fiber of my being. Today it finishes its run at the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs (where I moonlight as a projectionist on Friday nights), so I feel free to take a swipe at it. Although this review is largely spoiler-free, it’s primarily written for people who have seen the film, or at least have a heads up on the plot.
If Children of Men is a movie about the collapse of humanity after two decades of infertility, then it fails on almost every level. There is a barely-coherent narrative, very little is done to advance the plot (the second half of the movie is essentially one long scene), and the conceit of the story is not only wasted, but its after-effects make no logical sense. It is formally impressive, but the filmmakers cheated their way to achievement (several of the much-lauded “long takes” were CGI’d together), and the end result often plays distractingly like a video game, wedging more distance between us and the movie. (Such a disappointment from Emmanuel Lubezki, and only a year after The New World, maybe the best-photographed movie I’ve ever seen.)
Alfonso Cuarón is not without talent, but he is apparently without the capacity for complex thought. Filmmakers like Cuarón, his pal Alejandro González Iñárritu (director of Babel, probably the year’s most insufferable movie), and Iñárritu’s screenwriting partner Guillermo Arriaga (who also wrote the more complex The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada for Tommy Lee Jones, a much better movie, probably because Jones demanded Arriaga rewrite his script multiple times to improve it) present U.S. immigration issues as clumsily and black-and-white as the far right: They eye the subject with such narrow self-interest that they can’t or won’t acknowledge the complexity of the issue, especially the bothersome matter of competitive wages, or why people leave their home countries in the first place (violence, third-world economies, etc.).
From a story point-of-view, it makes absolutely no sense that a society dwindling on the edge of extinction would keep its borders closed. Such a society might not welcome immigrants with open arms, but we only have to look to our own history to show that they would at least bring them in as slaves to build their economy and keep up the status quo. But such logical thinking won’t even enter into the writing when you completely abandon your story and decide to use a two hour movie as an empty vessel for your lazy, simple-minded politics. (Honestly, had the immigrants been slaves instead of thrown out of the county, I probably would’ve really gotten behind this movie, because it (a) would’ve made sense and (b) been true to our experience: After all, illegal immigrants are essentially the slaves of our time.)
Then there’s the disdain for religion, the embrace of godlessness, yet still with a stinging sense of moral superiority and not the slightest hint of humility. And it’s not the least bit faithful to the book, which told the cautionary tale of a society that aborted and birth-controlled itself into oblivion. It simultaneously mocks Christianity, and dismisses the inherent Christ-like miracle, unique opportunity, and hope afforded to a Godless nation by a merciful God that is inherently present in the otherwise unexplained renewal of human procreation that is central to its nonexistent plot.
It never ceases to amaze me how thoughtless “artists” like Cuarón, Iñárritu, Todd Field (Little Children), and Todd Solondz — to name but a few — can invest so much into saying so little. The question of whether violence can be moral, the consequences of terrorism, our connectivity, our loss-of-and-desire-for human contact in an increasingly disconnected world— these are serious, weighty, and emotionally complex facets of modern life that have been explored in some great movies, most recently in Steven Spielberg’s masterful Munich.
Glib and cynical, these amateurs display no genuine interest in the hot-button issues they exploit. They have no hope, and desire only the approval of the anti-establishment. They mourn the world they live in, but offer no solutions for improving it, and no real justification for their despair.
Children of Men, worst of all, plays like a eulogy for the unborn.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Movies
Comments
By Tony
March 2, 2007 5:52 PM | Link to this
I liked itBy susan
March 1, 2007 10:24 AM | Link to this
Whoa … Zack, don’t hold back, man. Tell us what you really think. Okay, maybe, yes, but … i can see why the drama was set in Britain. The ‘stiff-upper-lip’ factor would lend credence to the belief that they’d hold onto whatever shreds of civilization still existed. To wit, their brushes with terrorism haven’t led to the overreaction to all things foreign we see here. With regard to the lack of spiritual reference points, it’s possible that the notion of spirituality is devalued in this world, evolving from the overall glut of religious fanaticism on all sides. Is it feasible that mentioning faith or religion carries such danger of fanatical reaction that there becomes a polite acknowledgment that we are too immature to tread there? All that aside, the scene in which a baby’s cry evokes nurturing responses and an unconditional ceasefire is as moving as anything I’ve seen this year. Maybe you over thought this one, Zack. Having heard babies cry many times, it was inspiring to be drawn into a world where it’s the sweetest sound on earth.