Man is the cruelest animal*

    There are times in the movie Children of Men when other beings help humanize our protagonist, Theo Faron (Clive Owen). This is a man whose apathy washes him like the cold light of a London dawn. We meet him as he navigates his day after learning that the youngest person on Earth, Diego Ricardo, has died. Theo doesn’t react but pushes through a line to get coffee rather than huddle with the masses. This rush saves his life as shortly afterward a bomb rips through the coffee shop. As we learn more about Theo and this world, we find that both are severely damaged, and apathy is a convenient survival mechanism.

    In Children of Men, the world has crashed into chaos. Nations are ravaged, war prevails, and babies are no longer being born. Theo’s problems are personal but no less wrecked, his marriage has ended, his child died, and he is simply surviving as a civil servant. These hard realities have sucked Theo into a “just existing” state. Those around him aren’t much better off: the dead eyes of his manager when Theo asks to leave for the rest of the day, “I seem to be more affected by Baby Diego’s death than I realized, sir,” are an indication that no one really cares. The man blankly stares back.

    Director, Alfonso Cuarón, screenwriters, Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby and cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, create this world padding the story with news reports, showing Britian and London as a bastion of peace (if one can ignore the bombing and squalor) but ever vigilant to any outsider on this dangerous and dying planet. A London Theo flees from when he is given the rest of the day off. He travels by train, a heavily fortified train, like any commuter, and heads to his friend Jasper’s (Michael Caine) home. The light is fresh here, the trees fill the screen, as they drive toward the house. So, unlike the coffee shop of blue light and slack-faced people filling the screen in the opening. It’s like after the heavy opening the filmmakers chose to let us all breathe for a moment. Jaspar’s home begs the viewer to wonder, why not stay. But as Theo tells Jasper, “If I did that, I’d have nothing to look forward to.” A shelter in the woods, the contrast to those first images is like a door: it’s not all bad, there is hope, here you can put your feet up and play with the dog and have a big golden cat lounge beside you (other beings).

    This is how the viewer is drawn to Theo. He is surviving and basically just that. But there is something about this character that radiates some kindness and light. Maybe he’s just in the right place to encounter animals but I believe the animals are there for a reason. Soon though Theo is in a very wrong place, kidnapped by a rebel group the Fishes led by his ex-wife, Julian (Julianne Moore), and asked a favor. The story and the camera work pick up from here.

    There are scenes that are breathtaking, chaotic, and amazing in a how did they film that sort of way; how did they conceive that? The entire normalcy of the car sequence begins with a road trip. Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), is introduced. Neither the viewer nor Theo knows anything about this young woman and how this meeting will change everything for Theo. The trip has a lighthearted moment or two and then violence and horror as the car is attacked and Julian is shot. All of this is filmed within the confines of the car. Each character sees and reacts as the camera goes around and around and around the interior while also capturing what is going past or behind or toward the car. The viewer is left dizzy and shocked and fully in this story.

    Aside from that, for much of the film, the camera is handheld. This feels immediate and intimate. When the survivors of the car attack arrive at a safe house, a farm, the sun is setting, the light is golden, and the farm dogs come to Theo. “They like you. And they don’t like anyone.” says the farmer, Tomasz (Jacek Koman). A trust. This same trust comes again as Kee reveals why she is being transported; she is pregnant. Twice more after this Theo is visited by animals, a kitten climbs his leg, and the dogs come to him as he listens to the Fish plan to kill him.

    This isn’t a story for the faint-hearted, it is grim and feels helpless, especially as Kee and Theo enter a refugee camp to escape from Britain. The filmmakers chose, I believe, to use what had happened worldwide in war zones and refugee camps. In one long sequence, as they enter the camp, a scene from a bus window allows us to witness what could have been a picture taken right from the collected evidence of American soldiers’ treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, where hooded men were beaten and humiliated. This particular entry gets grimmer as it goes down the line until it is corpses in a row. This is a fictional story but what the moviemakers have chosen could happen, has happened in many forms. Will happen again.

    In the end, the way the film is shot, where relief is offered visually to even out the horror and loss of hope is just as important as the actors. Jaspar buoys Theo. Jaspar’s forest and home give some vibrancy to the film. Julian’s belief in Theo, Kee’s belief in him buoy him from his very dark memories. There are layers of subtle hope that happen again and again throughout the film. Marichka (Oana Pellea) the woman who miraculously gets them through the camp to the boat is one of those layers. Theo is many-layered. We learn this over time, the animals always knew.

*Friedrich Nietzsche