The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Alfonso Cuarón · a film · 2006 · the theatrical cut, about 109 minutes · from the novel by P. D. James
Mode
Dystopian chase thriller shot as a war documentary; a political film and a Nativity in one plot
Mythos
The Nativity: a mother revealed among cattle, a guardian who is not the father, a birth among the dispossessed and a flight by water; the bearer who carries the child across the water and dies of it
Phase
Some days in 2027, eighteen years after fertility failed, from a bomb on a London street to a boat in fog off the coast
Presentation
Feature film in colour, the theatrical cut of about 109 minutes, in English with passages in other languages in the camp; three set pieces presented as single unbroken takes
Register
From a cartoonist’s jokes and a ping-pong ball in a car to a street under tank fire; flat grey light, the world kept in focus behind the people
Scale
One man’s journey and one child, across a nation that has lost its future
Governing Proposition
Eighteen years after the world stopped bearing children, a tired man in London agrees to move a young refugee across a Britain that cages foreigners, and finds that she is pregnant. The wager of the film is that a society without a future turns on the stranger and keeps order by cruelty made routine, that hope can be an act done for others by a man who believes in nothing, and that a camera which never leaves his side can make a catastrophe be lived as a continuous present that cannot be stepped out of.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens on a London street in 2027 and stays there, in what is presented as one unbroken take, until a bomb goes off. The camera does not cut to a safer place or rise to a commanding view. It stays at the height of a man walking, and what it sees it sees in passing. From the first minutes the method is set: the viewer is put inside the world and is not let out of it, and the catastrophe is a thing that happens in the street on the way to work.
The world is laid in the backgrounds. Eighteen years have passed since human fertility failed everywhere, and no child has been born since. Britain holds together by force: Homeland Security, ministries, managed news on every screen, advertisements for Quietus, penitents and cults in the streets, and foreigners rounded up and caged. From the window of a train the refugees in their cages on a railway platform go by like any other view. At the Ark at Battersea the art of the past is kept for a future with no viewers: Guernica on a wall, Michelangelo’s David with a damaged leg, and outside, a pig floating over the power station.
Alfonso Cuarón directed the film and wrote it with Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, from P. D. James’s novel The Children of Men (1992). Emmanuel Lubezki photographed it; Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez edited it; the music is John Tavener’s, with a soundtrack of existing recordings. Universal Pictures released it. It was first shown at the Venice Film Festival in September 2006 and released in Britain that month and in the United States in December. The theatrical cut runs about 109 minutes, in English, with passages in other languages in the camp. Clive Owen plays Theo, Clare-Hope Ashitey plays Kee and Michael Caine plays Jasper.
Movement II
Theo is a tired man in a jacket, and later in flip-flops, and he believes in nothing. His son is dead, and his marriage to Julian lies behind him; the film gives both in speech. Julian comes back into his life with the Fishes, an opposition to the state, and with a favour to ask, which concerns a young refugee named Kee. He agrees for his own reasons. He does not yet know what she carries.
On a country road, in a car, Theo and Julian blow a ping-pong ball between their two mouths, and for a moment the old marriage is a game again. Then a burning car is rolled down a hill toward them, a mob comes out of the trees, and Julian is shot in the neck. The camera is inside the car the whole time, in one take, and the viewer stays in the car while she dies. The joke and the killing share a single shot.
Julian’s death turns a favour into a vocation. The man who agreed to help for his own reasons now has no one else to hand the task to. The film does not say that he changes; it shows him going on. What he carries from here is a duty to a stranger, and the stranger is about to tell him why it matters.
Movement III
At the farmhouse where the Fishes shelter, Kee takes Theo into a barn among the cows and shows him that she is pregnant. In a world that has forgotten birth, a young woman, a refugee, pregnant without husband or explanation, is revealed among cattle. The scene is quiet and the film does not hurry it. It is the first height of awe in a film whose heights are mostly of dread.
The film is open about the Nativity it is building: the mother among the cattle, the guardian who is not the father, the journey ahead. Kee is kept unsentimental, a young woman rather than an icon, and Theo’s answer is not belief but a decision. The barn announces the myth plainly, and the rest of the plot will carry it.
Theo overhears the Fishes planning to keep the child as a political flag. The flight from the farmhouse follows, with a car that will not start, and it is the most conventional sequence in the film, suspense by formula. The Fishes, an opposition drawn as caricature, become one more danger on the road, and Theo and Kee are now alone with the child she carries and the Human Project somewhere ahead of them, a destination never shown.
Movement IV
Jasper, an old cartoonist, lives in a house in the woods. He smokes, plays records, makes jokes, and tells a “pull my finger” gag. Caine plays him as a turn, and the house is the last place of private life in the film, a room of music and kindness inside a country that has given up both. The journey needs it: it shows what the journey costs.
Jasper’s joke is his last act before he is shot. The kindness he keeps does not stop the world, and the world does not stop his kindness; the film holds the two together without comment. Theo and Kee go on toward the coastal camp at Bexhill.
On the way, the burning cattle by the road and the caged foreigners show a country disposing of what it no longer needs. The film carries the news images of the 2000s twenty years on, cages, hoods and checkpoints, and builds its future from the present worn down rather than from a designed and gleaming tomorrow. At Bexhill Theo and Kee pass in among the people Britain has put behind wire.
Movement V
In the camp a hooded prisoner stands posed as at Abu Ghraib, and in a ruined street a woman keens over her dead son. Kee gives birth in a hovel among the dispossessed. Then the uprising begins, and Theo runs down a street under fire with the camera at his shoulder, in one long take; blood lands on the lens and is kept in the frame. The viewer is in the street while the shells land, and nothing cuts away.
In a stairwell a newborn’s cry is heard. The firing stops. Soldiers kneel and cross themselves as Kee carries the child out through them, and once she has passed the tanks resume. It is the summit of the film: the war in the camp suspended by a cry, for as long as it takes a mother to walk by, and not one moment longer. The world is continuous and indifferent, and inside it the child passes.
A boat takes Theo, Kee and the child out into the fog. He is the bearer who carries the child across the water and dies of it. A ship comes out of the fog, the Tomorrow, as he dies. The screen goes dark on the voices of children, and the closing screen gives “Shantih shantih shantih”. Whether the ship is rescue or a dying man’s sight, the film does not say. What it has shown is hope as an act: a man who believed in nothing, doing for others what had to be done.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on structure and on the economy of the telling, and the subtractive test meets real resistance. The film is a chase with no subplot and no scene away from Theo, and its world is laid in the backgrounds of scenes doing other work: the bombed café, the caged refugees at the station, the Quietus advertisements, the burning cattle by the road. Julian’s early death turns a favour into a vocation; Jasper’s house is required, the last place of private life, whose loss is the cost of the journey. What gives: the Fishes’ plan to keep the child as a political flag is genre machinery, explained in an overheard conversation; the farmhouse escape, with a car that will not start, is suspense by formula; and parts of the exposition come in speeches that could be shorter.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds: a society that has lost its future does not grow gentle in its grief but turns on the stranger, and keeps order by administering cruelty as routine. Britain endures by caging foreigners. Much of this is said in image, and the image counts in full: refugees caged on a railway platform, a hooded prisoner posed as at Abu Ghraib, a woman keening over her dead son in a ruined street. A second truth concerns hope: Theo comes to believe in nothing and acts for others anyway, so hope is shown as an act, not a faith. Held below the gate because the political order stays a texture of screens and slogans rather than a mechanism, the Fishes caricature the opposition, and the infertility, its cause withheld, remains a figure rather than an articulated state.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Elevation is frequent and of the dreadful kind, and twice it turns into awe. The ambush on the road: a burning car rolled down a hill, a mob from the trees, the camera inside the car, Julian shot in the neck. The advance through Bexhill: Theo running down a street under fire, the camera at his shoulder, blood on the lens kept in the frame. Then the summit of the film: a newborn’s cry heard in a stairwell, the firing stopping, soldiers kneeling and crossing themselves as Kee carries the child out through them, and the tanks resuming once she has passed. The barn among the cows is a quiet height; the boat in the fog is the last. Held below the top because the middle third runs on suspense more than elevation.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The myth is built, not cited: a Nativity carried by the whole plot. A world that has forgotten birth; a young woman, a foreign refugee, pregnant without husband or explanation, revealed in a barn among cattle; a tired guardian who is not the father and takes her on a journey; a birth in a hovel in a camp of the dispossessed, attended by soldiers who kneel; a flight by water. Theo is also the bearer, the Christopher who carries the child across the water and dies of it, and both figures bear weight. The particular stays particular: a man in flip-flops, a ping-pong ball between two mouths. Held a tenth below the gate because the barn and the kneeling soldiers announce the Nativity more than they discover it, and the Human Project stays an offscreen grail, a ship in fog.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The inheritance is the dystopian film, from Alphaville (1965) through Blade Runner (1982) and Brazil (1985), whose futures were designed, gleaming or baroque; the chase thriller; and the handheld war film after Saving Private Ryan (1998). The turns are real. The future is built from the present worn down, with the news images of the 2000s, cages, hoods and checkpoints, carried twenty years on. The action film is shot in long unbroken takes with a documentary camera inside it, so set pieces are endured rather than cut for excitement. The novel’s English Christian fable becomes a story of refugees. The stake was real: a costly studio picture, a downbeat subject, an ending without triumph. Held below the bar because Welles, Tarkovsky and Kalatozov had proved the long take, and The Battle of Algiers (1966) the documentary look in fiction.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and the film loses what it knows, which is that this world cannot be stepped out of. The long take at Theo’s shoulder never cuts away to a safer place or a commanding view: the viewer must stay in the car while Julian dies and in the street while the shells land, and must take in the world as Theo does, in passing, at the edges of the frame. The form makes the disclosure, a catastrophe lived as continuous routine, the cages at the station seen from a train window. Told in cuts and inserts, with the politics explained, the film would know less. Held below the top because the form is used at its fullest in the set pieces while the scenes between are conventionally cut: it is the instrument in part, not throughout.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Twenty years of evidence, a short span. Return has yielded. The density of the backgrounds rewards repeated viewing: the art saved in the Ark at Battersea, Guernica on a wall and Michelangelo’s David with a damaged leg, a pig floating over the power station. The political reading has been renewed by events, the European refugee crisis of 2015 and Britain’s leaving the European Union above all, and the film has been reread as prophecy; Slavoj Žižek read it as a film about ideology in its backgrounds. Questions stay open: whether the ending is hope or a dying man’s sight. Held where it stands because much of the yield lies in surfaces and topical application, the characters are thin enough to yield little on return, and twenty years can suggest depth more than demonstrate it.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The intrinsic force is real: the film showed that the unbroken take, carried by a mobile camera, could make action an ordeal rather than a spectacle inside a studio picture, and that a dystopia could be made from the present’s own images. It perfected a manner more than it reorganised what film could do. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the long take became the signature of prestige action in the decade after, in Cuarón and Lubezki’s own Gravity (2013), in Lubezki’s work with Iñárritu on Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), in Sam Mendes’s 1917 (2019) and in the one-take fight of television drama; the worn present became the look of later dystopias. That reach is wide and demonstrable. Held a tenth below the gate because it lies in technique and look more than in what later films came to say.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Survival is weighed on form, presence and fabric. Form: the film as released survives whole, nothing lost and nothing replaced. Presence: across twenty years it has been continuously available on home video, television and streaming, has risen in critics’ polls of the century, and is taught and reshown as a model of the long take and as a political film; its presence has grown rather than faded, and is wide for a film of its year. Fabric: the digital elements are few and mostly unseen, the newborn among them. The surface is partly fixed to its moment, the iconography of the war on terror in the mid-2000s, but the film placed it in 2027 and it has been read as foresight rather than dated topicality. Twenty years is a short demonstration, and the figure says so.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Command of the medium, and the making bears weight throughout. Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera, mostly handheld or rigged, holds the light flat and grey and keeps the world in focus behind the people; the long takes are blocked so that action, extras, vehicles and effects meet their marks over minutes. The design builds a London and a camp from present materials worn down. The sound mixes gunfire, ringing ears, music and John Tavener’s choral writing as one field. Clive Owen carries nearly every scene with a slack body that hardens into resolve; Clare-Hope Ashitey keeps Kee unsentimental. The costs fall on the writing: the Fishes and the politics are explained in plain speeches, Kee is given little interior, and Michael Caine’s Jasper is played as a turn more than as a man.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: Jasper in his house in the woods, smoking, joking, playing records, telling a “pull my finger” gag, and the street in Bexhill under tank fire. One law governs both: the world is continuous and indifferent, private kindness persists inside it, and neither stops the other. Jasper’s joke is his last act before he is shot, and the war in the camp is suspended only by a cry. The ping-pong ball, the cows and the camp obey the same camera that will not leave the moment, from domestic comedy to massacre. The strain: the Fishes’ plot runs on thriller rules the rest of the film suspends, and the ship that comes out of the fog at the last is grace by arrival, which an indifferent world does not quite license, though it is kept ambiguous.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The orders held in one structure: the state, in Homeland Security, the camps and the managed news; the natural order, in a species that can no longer bear children; the family, in Theo’s dead son, his marriage to Julian and Kee’s child; history and culture, in the art kept against a future with no viewers; the sacred, in the Nativity the plot builds and in the penitents and cults in the streets; war, in the uprising. The plot joins them: the birth is a political object, a natural fact and a sacred sign at once. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve: consciousness is Theo’s alone and is held from outside; Kee, around whom everything turns, has little inner life; labour and economy are nearly absent; and the world beyond Britain is a set of news images.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.8, then The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.6. A making in which camera, staging, sound and a lead performance carry long unbroken takes through a ruined country; an elevation of dread that turns twice into awe, at the barn and at the cry in the stairwell; and a form that will not cut away, so that a catastrophe is lived as a continuous present that cannot be stepped out of.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.9: the state, the natural order, the family, culture, the sacred and war are joined in one birth, but consciousness is Theo’s alone and held from outside, Kee has little inner life, and labour and the world beyond Britain are nearly absent. Above it, The Bottomless Well at 8.0, a return of twenty years whose yield lies largely in surfaces and in events that renewed it, and The Inevitable at 8.2, where the Fishes’ plot and the farmhouse escape run on genre machinery.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Made at 8.8, The Living Form at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Archetypal Deep, Pressure on Tradition and The Imperishable stand at 8.4, a tenth short of the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment and The Swerve stand at 8.3, two tenths short. The Universal Minimum is met: of the eleven axes it covers, none falls below 8.0, against 7.5. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.9. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The summit is withheld by the Epochal Gate and by the aggregate, 8.4 from a sum of 100.2, below the 9.0 that Tier V requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Children of Men as released in 2006, the theatrical cut of about 109 minutes, from the opening on a London street to the closing screen: directed by Alfonso Cuarón, written by Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby from the novel by P. D. James, photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, edited by Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez, with music by John Tavener, for Universal Pictures. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. The novel is not part of the work and is named only where the film departs from it. Dialogue is quoted only where its words are certain, and otherwise described. The three long sequences are judged as the film presents them, as single unbroken takes; how they were made is not the object. Details that could not be verified, among them the length of each long take and the share of digital joining in them, the credits for production design, the state’s slogans word for word, where Slavoj Žižek’s commentary appeared, the budget, the box office, and the scene and shot counts, are not given.