clock … watching time, the only true currency

Children of Men darkens your life for watching it. But it’s not because the movie tells a poor story or tell its story poorly. Instead, the utter mundanity and recognizable degradation of a near future where the human race is now infertile (for reasons unknown) just saddens you. When a crying baby is a beacon for hope and a dove of peace, interrupting a brutal firefight in a ghetto between insurgents and military actors — well, you know it’s a depressing world.

The story moves quickly, at times silently, and your eyes are lulled by familiarity and wrenched by displacement at the same time. England uses a police state to keep its society functioning better than the rest of the world, but it’s all relative. When suicide is government sanctioned, all is not well. I’ve not read the book, which has the same general idea but a different plot. But I thought of author P. D. James as a mystery author; that’s selling her short, clearly.

I understand why this movie was not a box office success. Yet, I’m glad I pulled it from the Netflix pile. 84 from MetaCritic might be high, but it’s in the ballpark.