Alfonso Cuarón’s CHILDREN OF MEN predicts a bleak future for humankind
CHILDREN OF MEN (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, May 28, and Sunday, May 29, 11:30 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
www.childrenofmen.net
It’s 2027, and there hasn’t been a baby born in the world in eighteen years. For some unknown reason, women have become infertile, leading to chaos around the globe. Only England perseveres, but it is on the brink of destruction as warring factions prepare for doomsday. Onetime revolutionary Theo (an as-even-keeled-as-ever Clive Owen) has settled down into a mundane life, but he’s thrust back into the middle of things when he is kidnapped by a radical organization run by his ex-wife, Julian (Julianne Moore), and her right-hand man, the hard-edged Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Theo is forced to escort Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a young fugee (refugee), through the danger zone and to the Human Project, a supposed safe haven that might not actually exist. Also staring extinction in the face are Theo’s brother, Nigel (Danny Huston); Theo’s hippie friend, Jasper (a longhaired Michael Caine); and homeland security officer Syd (Peter Mullan). Inspired by the novel by P. D. James, the chilling Children of Men is a violent, prescient, nonstop thrill ride, moviemaking of the highest order, cowritten and directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Gravity) and photographed in vibrant filth and muddiness by Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, The Tree of Life). Nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay), Children of Men is one of the best of the dystopian science fiction films of the twenty-first century, predicting a future that is not as impossible as one might think. Stay through the credits for a tiny but critical coda. Children of Men is screening May 28 and 29 at 11:30 am as part of the Nitehawk Cinema series “May Brunch and Midnite: The Waste Land,” which also features Shaun of the Dead at 12:20 am Friday and Saturday night.
Award-winning husband-and-wife documentarians D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus have been collaborating for forty-five years, working on films about such subjects as Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign (The War Room), Carol Burnett (Moon over Broadway), soul music (Only the Strong Survive), pastry chefs (Kings of Pastry), and Elaine Stritch (Elaine Stritch at Liberty). For their latest film, Unlocking the Cage, they spent three years following animal rights lawyer Steven M. Wise, the president and founder of the Nonhuman Rights Project, as he sought to establish “personhood” for several chimpanzees in order to free them from their caged existence and move them to more acceptable animal sanctuaries. Wise and his team, Natalie Prosin and attorneys Elizabeth “Liddy” Stein and Monica Miller, scour the internet searching for chimpanzees to represent as well as sanctuaries where the animals can be released. (The Nonhuman Rights Project focuses on great apes, elephants, and such cetaceans as dolphins and whales because of their autonomy, intelligence, and emotional capacity.) The concept is fascinating, and the film hits its high points when Pennebaker and Hegedus show some of the chimpanzees interacting with humans in compelling ways, watching television or figuring something out on a computer. Unfortunately, far too much of Unlocking the Cage deals with often murky legal discussions and courtroom arguments that drag on and on.
“All of my stakes are in my work. I have given up in all else. I do feel I am an artist, and one of the best. I do, deeply,” German artist Eva Hesse explains in Eva Hesse, the debut feature by Marcie Begleiter, which is being brought back by popular demand for two screenings per day from May 25 through June 9 at Film Forum, following runs there and at Cinema Village. Begleiter, who has previously written the play Meditations: Eva Hesse and directed the short film Eva Hesse, Walking the Edge, examines Hesse’s too-brief life and career, as she dealt with feelings of alienation and deep loss through her art. “The power of her purpose was more important than what was going on in her life,” fellow artist and friend Rosie Goldman points out. Born in Germany in 1936, Hesse was determined to be an artist from an early age, first turning to drawing and painting, then to sculpture. The film features narration taken from Hesse’s journals, interviews, and letters between her, her main confidant, Sol LeWitt, and her father, William; Eva is voiced by Selma Blair, LeWitt by Patrick Kennedy, and William by Bob Balaban. Begleiter speaks with such contemporaries of Hesse’s as Richard Serra, Carl Andre, Nancy Holt, Dan Graham, Mike Todd, Roberth Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Hesse’s husband, Tom Doyle, who seems a little too trite given how they eventually parted. She also meets with Whitney curator and Hesse scholar Elisabeth Sussman, photographer Barbara Brown, art writer Lucy Lippard, and Hesse’s sister, Helen Hesse Charash, who sheds light on her sibling’s difficult childhood. But at the center of it all is Hesse’s inspiring art, which challenged the status quo as Expressionism shifted into Minimalism. “I will paint against every rule,” Hesse wrote, and she took that approach with all of her creations, including sculptures made of latex, metal, fiberglass, wire, and other industrial materials. The film firmly sets Hesse within the framework of the tumultuous era in which she worked, the 1960s, a time of great social and artistic change, but she still comes off as a lonely woman who could express herself only through her art. It’s both a sad and exhilarating documentary, a paean to the critical role art can play in life.
