Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Children of Men / UK / USA / 2006

What is Rosenbaum smoking? Setting aside for the moment the dubious decision to lump his reviews of Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men into a single Mexicans-gone-Hollywood write-up (to say nothing of his curiously lame top ten list), can he really be favoring Guillermo del Toro’s imaginatively sadistic, but largely incohesive fascist fantasy over Cuarón’s vigorous, vividly realized dystopia? At least he has the good sense not to rank the latter under Alejandro González Iñárritu’s utter abortion, but he nonetheless snottily derides the fact that Children of Men boasts (like many a hoary Hollywood screenplay) five screenwriters, as if the only worthy cinema is that which bursts fully formed from the venerable auteur’s head like the infant Athena. Hilariously, Rosenbaum finds Michael Caine’s novel but distinctly camp performance “mesmerizing,” a reaction I can only attribute to the fact that Jasper Palmer (the bizarro-world dope peddler version of Harry Palmer?) is an endearing purveyor of Mr. Rosenbaum’s favorite recreational vice. Who knows, amigo? Maybe J. Ro was high during the movie and its bracing vision of humanity’s future unduly harshed his mellow.

Too bad, as Cuarón’s film is — easily, far and away, and almost without argument — the best acted, cast, written, directed, scored, shot, and designed studio film of 2006. (Yes, as hard as it is for me to believe, better than Miami Vice.) After a year of nearly universal banality, Cuarón’s film seems to blow past all of the lazy, inconsequential, merely OK offerings of the past year like an icy wind. Emotionally wrenching, thrillingly paced, credibly prognostic, and provocatively attuned to the present political climate, Children of Men almost effortlessly synthesizes a host of dystopic visions – Pink Floyd’s Animals, A Clockwork Orange, The Handmaid’s Tale, 28 Days Later, and especially Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Watkins’s The War Game – enlarging, deepening, and improving upon all but one of them (guess which).

In my own summary of the year that was, I bemoaned the dearth of genuine, intelligent, and deeply felt engagement with the present in this year’s cinematic offerings. But, for all its grey, relentless futureshock, Children of Men single-handedly manages to make up for this pervasive lack — and not a moment too soon.

Tom’s thoughts | Jenny’s thoughts | Rumsey’s thoughts

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal Pictures digital projection
07 Jan 2007 5:32 PM | Comments (3)

Comments / 3 total / Submit Comment

1. Jenny / 9 January 2007 / 10:16 AM / URL

   Now really – J. Ro? He’s not the only one to lump together the three Mexican directors who happened to release within Hollywood this year. Try this list on for size (at least for a good chuckle).

   I’ll take the liberty of assuming your chiding comes out of respect though. The odd thing is, I feel as though a definitive backlash has formed against Children of Men, and it’s baffling. The “banality of story” Rosenbaum mentions is the complaint I’ve heard most often, which makes me want to A) see the film again so that I can B) comment that it only gets better. Getting back to J.R., although I truly like Pan’s Labyrinth, I’m the first to admit I would put Children of Men more than a few notches ahead of it, paticularly after a second viewing of del Toro’s film left me more underwhelmed than my first. I’m not entirely sure why the visual bravura of Cuaron is turning people off. Personally I miss seeing films that are so exciting to the eyes.

   The other common complaint I’ve heard – and I suppose this ties into the bitching going on regarding the script – is an extreme dislike of the film’s “hopeful” conclusion, with condescending remarks made about everything from the name of the boat to Theo filling a stereotypical role as “hero.” Personally, I just throw my hands up and walk away.

2. leo / 9 January 2007 / 10:41 AM / URL

   Well, of course many esteemed members of the press — most of them on Access Hollywood — draw painfully obvious connections between the gaggle of Mexi-Hollywood films this year. And this is precisely why I’m disheartened when this lazy round of connect-the-dots is the crux of a review by one of the last remaining print reviewers with half a brain. And when that half-brain concludes that del Toro’s eye-popping (and face-smashing) suture job ranks above Cuarón’s film because the former displays a better command of genre (dubious reasoning at best, even if you concede that unconvincingly splicing war epic and fairy tale conforms to a specific genre) — well, I start to wonder.

   And without giving anything away, I also puzzle over these criticisms of the “hopeful” (really? hopeful?) ending, nor do I have any time for those who call it “Spielbergian” (surely simplistic criticism of both this film and Spielberg). Theo’s parting advice to Kee is surely a hopeful indication that not all of men’s children will destroy one another, but there is no indication at all that this advice will be enough to sustain the race. But cautiously optimistic though the ending may be, I don’t know if I would have been able to get up the next morning if the ending had been any more dire.

3. Beth / 9 January 2007 / 1:51 PM / URL

   I don’t know if there’s so much a backlash against this film as a lack of awareness about it. Fittingly, a grassroots effort of sorts seems to have arisen on its behalf.