I’ve been saying this since I first saw it back in the day: Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is not just one of the best movies of the 2000s, it’s also one of the greatest films of all time. From its intense and poignant story about humanity getting a second chance after decades of infertility and the broken man thrust in the middle of it to outstanding acting performances to the technicality of the various one-shotters, it’s nothing short of masterful.
This great yet underrated movie, which somehow didn't win any Oscars, features some of my all-time favorite scenes, and there’s one that I go back to more times than not. So, you can only imagine how shocked I was when I recently discovered that this visually stunning white-knuckle action set piece was improved by a tiny yet magnificent mistake in the middle of a chaotic shoot. Let me explain…
Though The Car Chase Gets More Attention, Theo And Kree’s Escape Still Gets Me
Whenever I talk to people about Children of Men and its best scenes, more times than not, someone brings up the car chase sequence where Julianne Moore’s Julia Taylor is shockingly killed. Though that scene is an all-timer and let me know that Alfonso Cuarón’s was on a whole other level than his contemporaries, it’s still not my favorite sequence from this visually striking dystopian thriller.
Near the end of the movie, when Theo (Clive Owen) and Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) are attempting to reach the rendezvous point so that the new mother and her child can escape the U.K., they find themselves in the middle of a bloody fight between the military and refugees. The sequence ends with a jaw-dropping moment where the fighting stops due to the baby’s cries (the first anyone has heard in nearly 20 years), but the nearly nine-minute shot is a masterclass in filmmaking and intensity. And a mistake made it even better.
A Mistake In The Chaos Of Filming Made This Scene Even Better
There’s this really cool moment about a minute into the sequence where Theo is running through a bus when the camera is splattered with blood. The blood stays there for a large chunk of the scene, and so I always thought this was an intentional decision on Cuarón’s part in an attempt to make it more intense, but that wasn’t the case.
In an interview with Vulture years after the film’s release, the Academy Award-winning director revealed that this wasn’t meant to happen and that a squib went off at the wrong time, as he was going to use something similar in Julianne Moore’s death. But due to the confusion of the chaotic set, no one heard him say cut, as he explained:
And when we arrived at the bus, the camera goes in, and blood splatters the lens. With my little monitor, I see that I cannot see anything. I yell, ‘Cut’, but an explosion happens at the same time, so nobody hears me. And that gives me time to think, ‘Look, I have to roll to the end.’ So we kept on going. When we said, ‘Cut,’ [cinematographer Emmanuel ‘Chivo’ Lubezki] starts dancing like crazy. And I was like, ‘No, it didn’t work! There’s blood!’ And Chivo turns to me and says, ‘You stupid! That was a miracle! The blood goes here, not with Julianne Moore!’
While the scene would have been great even if it didn’t have the blood splatter, it added so much to the sequence and made you feel like you were part of the action (especially on the big screen). It just goes to show you that the smallest of errors can lead to something magical.
If you want to go back and watch Children of Men ahead of its 20th anniversary later this year (it’s just one of many great 2006 films worth celebrating), it’s one of the best movies available on the Criterion Channel. Maybe I’ll do that just now…
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