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FLICKS: Children Of Men One of the truisms of science fiction is that stories about the future almost always act as a critique of the present. by Chris Dashiell - The Film Snob One of the truisms of science fiction is that stories about the future almost always act as a critique of the present. In movies, the brush strokes tend to be broad, but Children of Men, the latest film from Alfonso Cuarón, is a rare combination of witty, humanist writing and gripping tension. It hasn't really been promoted very much, which makes me suspect that the studio, Universal, is afraid to market a film with such a dark political vision.

Children of Men takes place in the year 2027 in England. Violence and social collapse has spread across the globe. The most devastating catastrophe for the world has been the end of human fertility. No one has given birth for the past eighteen years, and no one knows why. Without a future to look forward to, the human race falls into viciousness and despair. In the meantime, refugees stream into England to escape the horrors in their home countries, while the English government conducts a brutal anti-immigrant crusade that imprisons the country's minorities in cages, and looters and terrorist groups run riot.

Clive Owen plays a disillusioned former activist named Theo, now scraping by with a desk job, who is enlisted by his ex-wife, an underground guerilla leader played by Julianne Moore, to smuggle a young black woman out of the country. As it turns out, this refugee is important because she's pregnant. The guerilla group wants to exploit her and her child to inspire an armed uprising. But the woman, played by the engaging newcomer Claire Hope-Ashitey, has different ideas, and needs Theo to help her.

Owen plays a character of remarkable range and sympathy, and the refreshing thing is that he's not some kind of action hero, but an ordinary person struggling to get by. Michael Caine is on hand as an old hippie friend of Theo's living in a secret safe house in the woods, smoking ganja, and he's delightful. The dialogue is relaxed and intelligent, and Cuarón creates a sense of heart-pounding excitement that keeps building as the movie goes on. One amazing sequence with a car being chased by a mob is done in one complex shot. The even longer tracking shot that ends the film is a tour de force that also symbolizes the act of birth.

Not having children anymore is a dark metaphor for a world facing its end, and the movie, well-adapted from a novel by P.D. James, expands this metaphor to embrace the wreckage of our time, including neo-fascist homeland security and anti-immigrant hysteria. The photography is stunning and the picture stares into the heart of our collective darkness while still offering a glimmer of light in the symbol of the woman and child, herald of a reborn future. The dystopia that confronts us in Children of Men is in fact our situation today. It's a movie you must see, and won't soon forget.