“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in.”
Join Ian, Liam & Megs for our 346th episode as we head into the bleak, terrifyingly plausible Britain of 2027 for Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006). Humanity hasn’t produced a child in eighteen years, society is collapsing, Britain has become an authoritarian state, and Clive Owen would really just like everyone to leave him alone. Kev isn’t with us this week — he attempted to enter the country without the correct paperwork and is currently enjoying the hospitality of the British government's immigration system.
And stick around for the Endgame, where we're joined by BFF of the BFE Synthia to help decide whether Children of Men deserves a place among the Best Films Ever.
This week we discuss:
How many screenwriters does it take to make Children of Men? Five credited writers had a hand in adapting P.D. James' novel. Does the finished film feel like the product of that many voices, or is Cuarón's vision strong enough to make it feel completely unified?
Clive Owen as Theo — an excellent actor giving a wonderfully understated performance, but was he a big enough movie star to carry a film this ambitious at the box office?
Michael Caine's Jasper becomes our most debated performance of the week — warm, funny and providing some desperately needed humanity... or playing in a completely different film from everybody around him?
How much world-building should the audience have to do? Children of Men famously refuses to stop and explain its dystopia, instead burying information in news reports, advertisements, background details and production design. Is that masterful "show, don't tell" filmmaking, or does the movie occasionally expect us to construct too much of its world on its behalf?
Ian digs into the screenplay — for a film with an enormous premise, why is the actual story remarkably simple, and does that simplicity allow the themes to become much bigger?
Liam explores hope in a hopeless world — when civilisation has effectively accepted its own extinction, what does the existence of one child actually represent?
Megs examines Kee's place within the story — is she given enough agency of her own, or does her importance as a symbol sometimes overwhelm her importance as a character?
Alfonso Cuarón's direction — those extraordinary long takes aren't simply technical flexes. How does keeping us trapped alongside Theo change the way we experience the violence around him?
The car sequence. We discuss how one seemingly impossible shot transforms from casual conversation to absolute nightmare without giving the audience a moment to escape.
The politics of Children of Men — refugees, nationalism, terrorism, state violence and fear of outsiders. Nearly twenty years after its release, has the film become even more uncomfortable to watch?
The production design — perhaps the film's greatest world-building weapon. From advertisements and graffiti to cages and buses, how much storytelling is happening in the corners of the frame?
The ceasefire — one of the most powerful sequences in the entire film. Does that brief moment of silence earn its enormous emotional impact?
And finally, with BFF of the BFE Synthia joining us for the Endgame, whether Children of Men is the Best Film Ever — or an extraordinary piece of filmmaking whose technical brilliance sometimes asks the audience to fill in more blanks than we'd like.
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