I remember vividly my first experience watching Children of Men in 2006; I had never felt like so uneasy watching a dystopian film before. Contrary to most other films in the genre at the time, this did not happen to me because I saw some far-flung totalitarian nightmare or plausible sci-fi technological malfunction go disastrously wrong. Children of Men terrified me because every element Alfonso Cuarón chose to depict felt like it could happen tomorrow morning over breakfast cereal. While Diane is correct that the films power stems from its rich literary backstory and philosophical musings, I wholeheartedly disagree with her assertion that these are the reasons Children of Men became such a damn good movie. Children of Men hit me so hard because it anchored fantasy elements of apocalypse in the mundanity of early 2000’s Britain.
Coinciding with Christmas Day in 2006 (Source), Children of Men arrived in theatres at the dawn of the 5th year of the War on Terror, at the height of when immigration became the defining political issue of British politics, and when climate anxiety began to shift from millennial hysterics into legitimate concerns of mainstream progressives. Alfonso Cuaron took the generally well-regarded but largely forgotten P.D. James novel about infertility affecting the planet and crafted a film that felt less like science fiction and more like a documentarian movie about the state of modern Britain. Children of Men felt like a frightening reality at the time it was released, mirroring the ever-growing authoritarianism and xenophobia we saw from Western governments.
| Director | Alfonso Cuarón |
| Year Released | 2006 |
| Genre | Dystopian Thriller / Drama |
| Runtime | 109 minutes (Source) |
| Inspired By | The Children of Men by P.D. James (Source) |
| Our Rating | 9/10 |
Children of Men made our list of essential 2000’s sci-fi films because it didn’t have flashy set pieces or expansive ideas about the future. Cuaron understood what made for great sci-fi and dystopian fiction by grounding his film’s more absurd concepts in realities we recognise. Children of Men understood that the scariest dystopian stories aren’t about imaginable future calamities but exacerbations of current realities we hope are not true.
The Ordinary Nature of Apocalypse
Children of Men terrified me the first time I watched it because despite the existence of some dystopian concepts like militarised police states and refugee borders, Britain itself did not look dystopian at all. 17 years after the last human child was born, society had somehow avoided descending into chaos. There were no nomadic gangs fighting over resources through empty city streets like you’d expect from most dystopian films. Britain had somehow become more Britain than ever, withrefs camps and brutal immigration enforcement complimenting what was already a fascist fortress nation at heart running on the sweat of its bureaucratic machinery.
Instead of portraying a dystopian vision of societal collapse, Cuaron painted a picture of Britain suffering from unbroken normalcy. Everyone still wakes up for work, catches the bus to job centres, and downs a cup of coffee before going about their day. Hell, even the birth scene at the end of the movie takes place in a building serving as a makeshift hospital because actual hospitals were too busy letting sick refugees die en masse to care for more pregnant women. The apocalypse in Children of Men occurs not with a bang but a whimper.
Children of Men became a radical milestone for representing how ordinary the apocalypse can feel. Up until this point, decades of dystopian films tasked filmmakers with imagining how the world would end or society would collapse. Cuarón brilliantly inverted that expectation by showing the world after society has ended but everyone has grown too numb to realise it. The movies opening scenes perfectly encapsulate this concept; middle-class hedge fund worker Theo buys some breakfast immediately before the world is bombed by terrorists. It’s not until after Theo’s breakfast is poisoned that the audience is introduced to the film’s ragtag group of resistance fighters.
The rest of the film takes place in a Britain that is continually bombed by unknown rebels while remaining at war with most of the world, yet nobody around Theo seems to care. They all go about their lives performing their mundane tasks because otherwise, what else is there to do? Society didn’t break apart; it just stopped trying to function. Now life is work, wait for your number to be called, and die. Everyone just accepts their lot in life and tries to stay numb enough to get by another day.
Comparing Children of Men to other films in the dystopian genre, you can see how prophetic Cuaron’s vision truly was. Today we have lived through how societies can slowly collapse while maintaining the facade of normality. From Brexit Britain, to COVID-19 lockdowns around the globe, to the ongoing climate crisis, people have had a decade to become numb to how the world is ending around them. We stay busy with our lives at home watching it on TV while being too frightened to leave the safety of normalcy.
Immigration and the Fortress State
Few things scared me more about Children of Men than the idea that Britain had become a fortress state. With the rest of the world having descended into chaos due to infertility, Britain had become “the only country that continues to function” (Quote). This represented a terrifying concept at the time about how Britain might react if faced with the same circumstances. In order to maintain order with so many refugees pouring in from abroad, Britain had militarised the enforcement of immigration law. Britain had turned into a single, massive refugee camp at Bexhill where caged dissidents awaited their doom and rights were abused at will by bureaucrats and patrolmen alike.
The film’s portrayal of the refugee camp especially hits different when watching it in 2021. The scene where refugees are put through a purge-like process of dormancy and violence from official Britain was chilling in 2006. Today, it’s a sad depiction of what we actually let our governments get away with.
It was especially noticeable at how the movie normalised authoritarian tactics as both necessary and arbitrary. Britain patrols buses at random for identity cheques, raids suspected illegal immigrants houses at dawn, and regularly harasses foreign-looking individuals with casual violence. Britain needs to keep the disenfranchised quiet with oppression because their society is falling apart around them. Authoritarianism is not stormed around with soldiers and flags being waved. Authoritarianism is quietly implemented through emergency laws that become the status quo. Children of Men showed us how government becomes abusive through the normalisation of violence and bureaucracy.
Few scenes from any film get me quite like the refugee camp sequences from Children of Men. From the dehumanisingly cold way refugees were treated by bureaucrats to the casual brutality of the army patrolmen, children were seen and not heard. Cuaron’s direction is so brilliant during these scenes because he never lets you forget you’re looking at real people. These refugees are allowed to have their personal stories and politics just as the patrolmen are allowed to have motivations beyond being caricatures of historic villains. One of the soldiers shoots a refugee but is knocked out by someone else. Another soldier instantly shoots him down in cold blood. This kind of violence is banal; it’s absolutely terrifying.
Cinéma Vérité and Science Fiction
Not only did Children of Men revolutionise how dystopian fiction could be portrayed through a story, but it also changed science fiction filmmaking for good. By eschewing typical genre filmmaking tricks for long takes, documentary style cinematography, natural lighting, and handheld cameras Children of Men has never felt more immediate. For the first time in science fiction, I wasn’t watching some soulless blockbuster trying to depict the future, I was watching someone document the future.
Long shots like the incredible car ambush sequence and final shoot out through the refugee camp place you directly in the action. You don’t watch these scenes, you live them alongside the characters Cuaron puts you behind. Every ping of a ricocheting round from the car ambush stresses you out because you don’t know where it’ll come from next. You feel trapped inside that car with those characters, and you don’t want to leave.
This sense of realism didn’t just stop at camera movement. Every element of Children of Men was paced to reaffirm how real this world could feel if it were real. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki masterfully captured the decaying essence of urban sprawl, dirty grim refugee camps that eerily resemble real-world ones, and a general sense of societal collapse. Couple that with a realistic gritty texture to everything, and you have a film that feels more like you’re watching newsreels from an apocalyptic world rather than a Hollywood film about said apocalypse.
Furthermore, the art direction for Children of Men was some of the scariest terrorism I have ever seen on film. There were constant reminders that this society has simply accepted horror as normative. From posters advertising euthanasia vaccines you can take if your child fails its federal fertility test, to gun-wielding bureaucrats ensuring everyone does what they’re told, britain had accepted horrifying compromises to maintain normalcy. Children of Men understands that most dystopian societies aren’t the product of revolution but bureaucracy.
I recently watched Children of Men for the sole purpose of trying to reverse engineer how they did the car ambush scene. How did they film an entire action sequence for almost 7 minutes without any cuts? How did they make me feel so trapped inside that car with those people? As I watched the six-minute-long take, I understood why. You live through that ambush with those characters, you feel the gunshot wounds scratching at your skull as you duck for cover. You don’t get to breathe a sigh of relief from cinematic cutting like most movies allow. When you see blood splatter across the camera lens, you don’t look away because there is no place for you to look. You’re in that car with those people, and there is no getting out.
Balancing Despair with Hope
Children of Men is a film masterfully balanced between cynicism and hope. The transformation of protagonist Theo from apathetic bureaucrat to heroic saviour encapsulates this duality. We as the audience feel as though the world is already doomed at the start of the film, but we slowly find reasons to care about the human spirit. Children of Men never promises that your actions can stop the world from ending, but it suggests your actions can still mean something.
Nothing about the final birth sequence photographed in a mind-blowing twenty-minute single take riding through an urban war zone encapsulates this idea better than when the baby is born. A newborn child cries out in the middle of a firefight and every soldier from both sides stops fighting to quietly watch this baby breathe. It’s the most powerful metaphor about hope that cinema has ever constructed. One could argue it paints a cheesy or cliché picture about humanity, but Cuaron earned that baby’s life.
After 90 minutes of unrelenting despair, you witness true magic on screen. There is no CGI deus ex machina birth, just pure genuine filmmaking at its finest. For a brief moment during the film’s climax you forget just how apathetic everyone was towards the world dying around them. Children reminds us that even when it feels like the world is ending, there is always something beautiful left to experience.
This beautiful balancing act is why Children of Men has stayed with me for so long and other dystopian films feel distant or hollow in comparison. Children of Men understands the world is truly fucking screwed, but we do not have the luxury of giving up. Hope is not the intelligent choice. Hope is a choice you make when you decide there is still something worth saving. There is never going to be a perfect time to be hopeful about the future, and in many ways, maintaining hope is a privilege as the world inevitably collapses around us.
Prophecy does not a great film make
I could spend the rest of this article listing every eerily prophetic moment Children of Men got spot on. Mass migration crises and refugees, authoritarian policy responses, normalisation of surveillance, breakdown of internationalism, rise of violent extremist factions; these are all things I could write about regarding how Children of Men became a self-fulfilling prophecy of modern anxieties.
Children of Men also predicted the manipulation of media and propaganda we experience today. How media organisations weaponise trauma towards Kee so she cares for their baby, how everyone has access to their own individual news streams filling them with biased information, how we couldn’t tell what was real and what was crisis actors if it happened today.
But what makes Children of Men so much more than just zeitgeist prophecy is how it understood the psychology behind coping with trauma. Children of Men understood that major worldwide trauma isn’t answered with revolutionary action or outright societal collapse. People just learn how to accept horror bit by bit until it becomes a nightmare they cannot wake up from. They accept more surveillance in the name of safety, they ignore evil that does not affect them directly, and they learn to comply with society’s failing systems.
Why Children of Men Matters Today (and Every Other Day)
Despite Children of Men’s relatively low budget of ~$76 million USD (Source) and terrible domestic performance making just $35 million USD (Source) Children of Men has solidified itself as a modern cinematic classic. Its impact can be seen across major sci-fi films and TV shows that try to mimic Children of Men’s grounded approach to speculative fiction. People were willing to go out and see a hardcore, difficult, and bleak movie about realistic concepts of dystopian futures.
Children of Men singlehandedly changed the technical language of filmmaking for Hollywood. The infamous long takes, integration of practical and digital effects, and innovative production design aspects influenced everything from grimy television dramas like Chernobyl to large-scale arena spectacles like Avengers: Endgame. Children of Men changed how science fiction could talk about modern day politics by refusing to give audiences the comfort they wanted.
Children of Men captures what it’s like to live through a historic moment of crisis. It plants you right into the thick of cataclysmic catastrophe that has become normalised and shows you there is still humanity in the world. Children of Men understood that you could have the most bleeding-edge technology depict apocalypse but still never capture that dystopian feeling we fear. All it took was filming real actors in realistic scenarios and not giving the audience an escape route.
Children will continue to scream about how the world is going to hell every year that passes and we don’t solve climate change. We like to announce the death of cinema every time a giant blockbuster makes billions at the box office while smaller films fall through. But you know what won’t die? Kids continues to matter because it was never really about the future we were afraid of, it was about today.
Quinn Mercer is Dystopian Lens’s nostalgic soul, dedicated to all things retro in the world of sci-fi. With a passion for ‘80s pop culture, classic video games, and practical effects, Quinn’s writing is filled with personal anecdotes about growing up on the golden age of sci-fi. His conversational style transports readers back in time, while also critically reflecting on the state of modern sci-fi. A collector of VHS tapes and action figures, Quinn’s love for old-school media makes him the perfect guide to revisiting the classics and comparing them to today’s high-tech remakes.