by Daniel Stephens

Created on: March 26, 2007   Last Updated: February 15, 2009

Children of Men (2006, USA/UK, 2006)

Alfonso Cuaron's bleak but brilliant film set in a self-destructive future born out of fascist authoritarianism and humanity's loss of fertility is a damning, uncompromising picture of one possible eventuality. As a picture postcard of what a British National Party-run Britain could be, Cuaron's film is the perfect antidote to their political and cultural ignorance. The film is deeply affecting, not just in its graphic depiction of violence and a society overrun by narcissism and government indignation, but in its believable view of a future not too distant from our own. Children of Men is a fascinating, original and frightening film that cuts so closely to the bone it actually hurts.

Clive Owen plays Dillon, a working man who has left his activism days behind him. When an old flame (Julianne Moore) arrives with a proposition, he finds himself thrust into a political nightmare. Britain, in the 2020's is, like every other nation on earth, dying out. Infertility has taken hold. No babies have been born for nearly twenty years and when the youngest man on earth is murdered, the tabloid news has, as you'd expect, nothing better to focus on. Migration has become a thing of the past in the United Kingdom. All non-Brits are holed up in detention camps not unlike Nazi ghettos during World War 2, and random acts of brutality and murder are rife. Dillon is tasked to help a refugee escape the country. What he doesn't know is that a miracle has occurred - the girl is pregnant. However, after Moore's character is brutally killed by her own people, Dillon finds himself trying to escape the police who wrongly believe he's a cop killer and Moore's revolutionaries who know and want the baby for political gain.

Cuaron's film is certainly a take-no-prisoners affair. He cites a future overcome with fear and distrust, and insinuates that God may even be punishing us for our sins by taking away our ability to create life. It's a world that has lost faith in both God and the political system - which one is worse is not known, but it needn't be. Cuaron's London of 2027 is a hell so real it actually feels like it could happen.

Any great science-fiction film takes some form of reality and extenuates it, blows it out of proportion or adds a level unheard of before. The fact it is based in a reality we can all relate to is what makes it believable and attainable. Children Of Men takes very topical political and cultural notions and turns them into the

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