Children of Men
starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Pam Ferris, Danny Huston, Peter Mullan and Michael Caine
screenplay by Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby
directed by Alfonso Cuaron
Called “Tomorrow Land” in Japan and based on the book by P.D. James, I was hesitant to rent this DVD because I didn’t recognize any of the stars in it (except for Julianne Moore), which is important for me since the pictures on the box are almost all that I have to judge video and DVD rentals in Tokyo. I was in the mood for Science Fiction, and “Tomorrow Land”sounded like SF. It wasn’t, but it was still a bloody good film, I thought. Scary and disturbing, too. Michael Caine delivered a good performance of a typically English eccentric.
In 2027 every woman in the world is barren, leaving the human species only a century before extinction takes over. It means the end of social order throughout the world. Only Great Britainhas maintained a civil society, but it does so at the expense of absolutely all liberal democratic civil liberties. It is a police state under siege, where it is illegal to be a foreigner, and illegals are systematically hunted, arrested and put in concentration camps. Refusing a fertility test is illegal. Many of the cityscapes look like Tokyoafter the March 9, 1945incendiary bombing, or Berlinafter the fall.
This future world is not so much a joke in today’s world, because it is not much of an exaggeration of the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States where, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks U.S. federal government spokespersons were warning Americans to be careful what they said and did; where citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely without charge; where the necessity of evidentiary proof against detainees is waived; where habeus corpuslaws have been scrapped or are just ignored; where an manner of war crime is perpetrated with the impunity extended by invoking “national security.” It’s ugly. It’s not beyond possible. It’s scary. It’s a good film.