Disappointed with "Children of Men"

I've been looking forward to the DVD release of "Children of Men" since I didn't see the theater release.

What a let-down.

The P.D. James novel was a good read: set in Britain in the year 2021, when fertility has mysteriously faded and the world hasn't had a child born for 18 years. As the last generation to be born, those in their 20s have been spoiled to the point of becoming unruly, even vicious and murderous. The government mandates fertility testing, but hope has all but faded, and the citizens have accepted a dictatorship in return for stability and pleasure in the remaining years of human existence. In order to manage England's fading resources, immigration is strictly managed, people are shipped off for any disruption to the government's plans, and old people are euthanized through the advertised services of the "Quietus."

(Spoiler alert: If you don't want to know what happens in the novel and the film, stop reading)

In the James novel, the lead male character, Theo, slowly discovers the inhumanity of the dictatorship that his country has accepted. He discovers this through his connection with a group of five ordinary Christians who call themselves "the Five Fishes" (an ancient symbol of Christianity). Though hopelessly ordinary, the little band tries to make their concerns known, only to be falsely accused by the government of being a terrorist organization. The Five Fishes approach Theo because of his connection to the dictator (they are cousins). In his time with the group, he discovers the truth about the hellish prison island that people are shipped to, and he watches in horror as the wife of an old friend of his participates in the "Quietus," whereby drugged seniors are chained to boats that are then sunk at sea.

And then he makes the most stunning discovery of all: Julian, the leader of the Fishes, is pregnant. The government didn't bother to test her (nor the father), since both had deformations that the government would not have found desirable. There's something wonderfully symbolic of Julian's delivery in a stable, like another child of hope born in a stable 2000 years ago.

As I said, a good read.

So, what happened to the story as it got turned into a film? An incomprehensible mess.

Xan, the dictator, makes a cameo appearance in the film, but his advantageous connection to Theo is never exploited. In the film, Julian is Theo's ex-wife, and she's had a long history of leading the Fishes--which in the film is clearly not a band of ordinary Christian citizens but rather a resistance band of violent, foul-mouthed fighters who are armed to the teeth and like to blow things up. We're never told why they like to blow things up, and they come across as a bunch of hardened anarchists. In fact, in a mad power play among the Fishes, Julian is assassinated by some of the others. Huh?

Yes, there's a pregnant woman in the film: not Julian but an immigrant named Kee who couldn't say which of her many "wankers" is really the father. Theo and Kee run for their lives along with the midwife Julian had enlisted to help with the delivery. Along the way, this midwife mumbles an amalgamation of Eastern chants and something that sort of sounds like Christian prayers. That's a close as we get to anything like the faith convictions of P.D. James' Christian characters.

There's the Quietus, too, and in the film it lives up to its name: a sort of "euthanasia home kit" where you can quietly take your own life. Theo takes Kee and the midwife to the country home of an older couple whose friendship he has enjoyed over the years. This is one of the more bizarre concoctions of the film: Michael Caine plays this old pot-smoking hippie: every time he's in a scene, there's a soundtrack of old sixties music playing. Did the film makers ever consider that if the film is set in the year 2021, Caine's senior adult character would have been in preschool during the 60s? Well, the Fishes find the runaways anyway, and as the anarchists close in, Theo and the midwife and the mother-to-be escape while the old man euthanizes his infirm wife with their little Quietus kit.

The film has won a bunch of awards for its cinematography, and deservedly so. In several scenes, a single camera captures all the action without cutting away, and this clearly took some planning. But this is one of the most ham-fisted adaptations of a book that I've seen in a long time. If you haven't seen it, drop it from your Netflix queue and read the book instead.