AP Film Studies: Children of Men

Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece might be turning into truth.

I emerged from the Academy Theater 10 years ago, shaking, and lit a cigarette. I propped myself against the wall of Flying Pie and inhaled, silently, as I realized I was glistening with sweat.

Rarely has a film hit me as squarely as Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 masterpiece, Children of Men, which is being resurrected this week as part of the Academy's audience-picked 10-year anniversary series. From the film's opening moments of jarring violence to its placid finale, it's a stressful, gorgeous vision of a world gone mad. In it, the human race has become inexplicably infertile. When a pregnant woman surfaces, it's up to an activist-turned-pessimistic bureaucrat (Clive Owen) to protect her from militants looking to politicize her womb.

Embraced by film nerds and critics but shrugged off by the general public, Children of Men is a visceral experience highlighted by two single-take sequences—a car chase and a voyage through a war-torn hellscape—courtesy of Emmanuel Lubezki. The cinematographer is now a three-time Oscar winner from whom you expect this kind of thing, but his work was revelatory a decade ago. The film thrusts you headlong into the action, but that's not even the half of what makes it so enthralling.

The real trick is how Cuarón takes a high-concept sci-fi premise and grounds it in reality with a mastery to rival Kubrick's. The story of humankind's impending extinction—based on a novel by P.D. James—seems basic enough. It's the background details that make the film alarming, as this alternate reality mirrors ours. Terrorists are bombing public spaces at random. Immigrants are rounded up like vermin at the border. Deranged guards cover their captives' heads with black hoods and ridicule them. And the world is heartbroken at the death of "Baby Diego," its youngest citizen, who is actually 18 and sounds more like a Kardashian than a paragon of hope.

These background details would be heavy on their own. Here, they're window dressing on an already intense story, an action fable that's both brain food and white-knuckle adrenaline fix without seeming fake. This isn't some stylized vision of the future with flying cars. It's one in which a teenager enjoys what look like Google Glasses from the safety of a guarded apartment block. Nothing is forced as commentary, it's just incorporated into the everyday of Cuarón's world.

Ten years ago, Children of Men was the most timely movie on screens, with its allusions to reality TV, homegrown terrorism, Abu Ghraib, and technology's encroachment on relationships. Ten years later, it's just as relevant. In hindsight, some of its bleak images of society seem like prophecies of our current geopolitical minefield. It's the kind of thing that makes you shake outside a theater.

SEE IT: Children of Men is at Academy Theater. March 4-10.

APFilmStudies_2015 Also Showing:

The Hollywood theater launches its new Queer Commons series with the 1995 Canadian drama When Night is Falling, the tale of a professor at a religious college who finds herself drawn into a romantic relationship with a circus performer. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Wednesday, March 2.

With PIFF now in the rearview, the NW Film Center continues its stride with a retrospective on German auteur Wim Wenders. This week includes the director's surreal and dark 1972 debut The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Friday) and signature road movies Wrong Move (Saturday) and Alice in the Cities (Sunday). NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. See nwfilm.org for full listings.

Before he was whitewashing Africa with the horrid-looking Gods of Egypt, director Alex Proyas was the man behind Dark City, a hallucinogenic piece of sci-fi noir that had many people heralding him as visionary. Laurelhurst Theater. Friday-Thursday, March 4-10.

Todd Haynes' strange and fascinating Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There is the second film in which a white dude is born a small black child. Only this time he grows up to be Bob Dylan rather than invent the Opti-Grab. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 & 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 3 pm Sunday March4-6.

The forgotten Orson Welles classic Chimes at Midnight—featuring Welles as Shakespeare's Falstaff—gets a much-deserved revival, complete with meticulous restoration. Cinema 21. Opens Friday, March 4.

Triangle Productions spearheads a revival of Arthur… the charming Dudley Moore version from 1981, not the shitty Russell Brand one that we try to pretend doesn't exist. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Friday, March 4.

Cinema Project is going balls out—literally, in some cases—with "First Three Years Hardcore Home Movies," a curated, touring screening series featuring experimental GLBT films from 1990-2013, plus a deep dive into the Queercore film movement, with films dating back to 1989. NXT Industries. 6-7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, March 5-6.

French New Waver Jacques Rivette's Out 1 is seldom screened, probably because it's a 12-hour opus about theater troupes and secret societies in a changing France. Luckily, the NW Film Center is spacing it out in eight serialized parts. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. Opens Saturday, March 5.

After a brief PIFF-related intermission, the NW Film Center's Bombay to Bollywood series kicks into highly choreographed gear again with 2002's Devdas. NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. 3 pm Sunday, March 6.

Oh hey! Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar. He probably should have done that 10 years ago when he offered up a jangled performance that held The Departed together. He was nominated that year for The Blood Diamond, a film that is getting a celebratory anniversary screening nowhere. Mission Theater. Opens Sunday, March 6.

In honor of recently deceased cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Vilmos Zsigmond, the Hollywood is spending march screening films with some of the best cinematography of all time, starting with the Robert Altman-directed, Zsimond-shot anti-western McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Monday, March 7.

Czech director Miroslav Janek's The Unseen combines abstract techniques and documentary storytelling to compelling effect in examining the everyday lives of blind children. Clinton Street Theater. 7 & 9 pm Monday, 4 & 7 pm Tuesday, March 7-8.

If the title of Kung Fu Theater presentation Snake in the Monkey's Shadow doesn't entice, and the idea of a snakefist vs. drunken-boxing throwdown doesn't make you tremble with excitement, well, maybe this one isn't for you. Because you're dead to me. Hollywood Theater. 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 8.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.