journal features

movie review - Children of Men

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2008.03.10

This is a sci-fi pick about a world without (human) pregnancies. As you might imagine, it's a bit of a dystopian future, with the youngest living people already in the twenties (and the very youngest a global celebrity) and not a lot of the planet doing very well at all. There is major unrest everywhere, and our story picks up in the UK where a man is hired by his ex-wife and her organization to transport what might be the only living pregnant woman to safety (off-shore).

This thing is beautifully done. Insanely tense throughout, it's an uncompromising ride through a hell of our own making in which people are fighting for unspecified outcomes (or in many cases simply to survive) and the authorities themselves are shooting first and asking questions later. Blending scenes from many a historical segment, it's a war story, a holocaust story, a redemption tale, and manages to sift through a failed romance.

Also, the cinematography at points is simply astonishing: e.g. there's an ambush scene in which they somehow film both inside the car and then out without any sign of the camera rig that must have been there to film the stuff inside the vehicle. It may sound like a minor thing but the camera somehow always manages to be exactly where the action is, even if that's the point of impact from a shell fired by an armored unit.

Strongly recommended. Probably one of the few movies that I've found simply perfect. A favorite.

Also, I noticed after I wrote this that this is my 500th movie review. Amazing.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner