by Emily Maesar, Associate Editor, TVJawn

Did you know that in the 2010s, only three white directors won the Best Director Academy Award? Of the ten directing Oscars given out from 2010-2019, three Mexican directors absolutely dominated the category. The Three Amigos consists of Alfonso Cuarón (who won in 2013 and 2018), Alejandro González Iñárritu (who won back-to-back Oscars in 2014 and 2015), and Guillermo del Toro (who won in 2017). All made consistently great work before winning their first Oscar, and all continue to do so now. 

While del Toro has the largest filmography of the three of them, Cuarón and Iñárritu were recognized by the Academy early in their careers. With the exception of Cuarón’s first film, a Spanish-language film called Sólo con tu pareja, all of his films have been nominated for at least one Oscar. Even if it’s for Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects, like with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

So, it should come as no surprise that his 2006 film Children of Men was also nominated for Oscars—Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing. While it didn’t win any of those awards—it was a tough year with del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and the juggernaut of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, not to mention Iñárritu’s Babel—it was still a shocking and great triumph since the film was a commercial failure. But you knew that. This is a series about films that flopped, after all.

Children of Men, adapted from PD James’s 1992 novel The Children of Men, is a dystopian thriller: in the world of the film, there hasn’t been a new child born in nearly two decades. Immigration is more of a nightmare than it’s ever been, a really important sticking point for Cuarón’s interpretation of the story, and there are tons of new laws that firmly place the world—but specifically the UK in 2027—in a religious right-leaning oligarchy. When the youngest person alive is murdered and a bomb is set off in a coffee shop, Theo (Clive Owen) finds himself entangled in a plan to help his ex-wife and her group of militant activists, the Fishes. He is tasked with bringing Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the first pregnant person in eighteen years, to the Human Project, a legendary but hidden group dedicated to finding the cure for humanity’s infertility.

What’s interesting about Children of Men is that while it was a financial flop, it has always had pretty universal acclaim. It’s famous for Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s use of single-shot sequences, for instance. The scene in the car toward the beginning of the film always gets a lot of love because it’s quite flashy and brutally sad, with the ping-pong ball, the death of one of our leads, and the car chase. But the three-and-a-half-minute sequence where Kee gives birth at the end of the film is, perhaps, the one I love the most. All the single-shots, though, are beautifully choreographed and deeply arresting—especially considering Cuarón’s documentary kind of style. 

However, the film is equally famous for its political commentary and religious iconography. Front and center is how the film talks about immigration. Obviously, it’s a huge part of the crux of the film—they’re trying to get Kee away from the UK government because they’ll completely ruin her life for the chance to have the first child born in almost twenty years. But so would any government. The Human Project is a beacon of hope, if only Theo and Kee can escape the patrolling police, treacherous Fishes, and an undocumented immigration camp. It’s also quite meaningful for the film to change the pregnancy from Julian–as it is in the book, though she’s not Theo’s ex-wife–to a Black woman who needs to immigrate. “We're putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that,” said Cuarón.

As for the religious elements, James pulled the title of the book from a Biblical quote. And the film doesn’t shy away from religion. The government has obviously evolved to be much more overtly religious in their law making, which is seen as brutal, overpowering, and dangerous. However, the protagonists still have a lot of their own religious imagery, without any deep negativity—from the creation of a new nativity scene to Theo’s death pose in the boat. Cuarón told Filmmaker Magazine that he “didn't want to shy away from the spiritual archetypes” but wasn't interested in dogma. However, the enduring thing about Children of Men is that, with every passing moment, it becomes more and more relevant. One of those sad, but true pieces of art. 

I took an adaptation class in college, and I was surprised (and delighted) that we ended up covering Children of Men. I finally had the chance to read James’s novel, a book I’d owned for a very long time because I loved the film so much but had never actually read. And boy howdy is the novel a different beast, and the differences are part of what makes Children of Men such a remarkable feat. Because even without many of the audience having the novel as a jumping off point, the changes that the five credited writers (Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby) made are astounding. Instead of being a story about power and the corruption of power (Theo ends up being in control of the UK government by the end of the book), the film is a story about hope and sacrifice.  

Cuarón has talked about how he looked at the infertility in the story as a metaphor for the fading hope of humanity. That Kee and her daughter are the flash of hope that humanity needs, but that faith in the Human Project (that they exist, yes, but also that there are still people who are trying to save humanity and haven’t just accepted extinction) is what ultimately saves us. Or that it could save us. The ending of the film is ambiguous on purpose. There are a million different things that could happen after their boat is found. It could be the Human Project, and everything works out (sans Theo’s life), or it could be the Human Project and they’re just as messy as the Fishes. But, of course, it could always just be people on a boat who are completely unaffiliated—and who knows what will happen to Kee and Dylan then. 

That ambiguity is why I was always drawn to Children of Men, why I watched it on repeat even when I was too young to really understand the geopolitical implications of it. Because the idea that Theo would find purpose and dedicate himself to Kee and her future, to the detriment of his own, is what makes Theo heroic by the end of the film. It also means that however you interpret the ending is a litmus test for how you view the world. Do you believe in hope for the future, or in the enviable destruction of humanity? It endures for this reason, both in the public opinion and in my heart. It is a film about hope in the face of annihilation, and you get to decide if it was warranted or not.