The novel was aimed at the so-called “young-adult” market, but this is a typical post-apocalyptic story that fits our present frame of mind.
By Bob Brown
AUTHOR Jeanne Duprau, whose book is the basis for this movie, is a Bay Area native. As a child in the 1950s, when everyone was terrified of a nuclear war, she remembers people building bomb shelters in their basements or back yards. “I think this influenced my idea for Ember — a city built to protect the human race from a terrible threat,” she says on her Web site. “But I was also just interested in the idea of a city that had no light other than electricity. What would it be like to live in such darkness, and to know that light and food and supplies were all running out? And not to know about weather or trees or animals (except for a few rats and insects) or any other places?” This is what you get from living in California’s deregulated electricity market.
So Ember is a sort of city-sized bomb shelter, built to protect the human race from an unnamed catastrophe that would otherwise have wiped us out. But imagine that bomb shelter, dank and mildewy, running out of precious foods, like 200-year-old canned pineapple? You’d be fighting giant moles for the remaining 200-year-old saltines. And patching 200-year-old plumbing with tape and putty.
For the last 200 years, mayor after mayor in Ember has handed down a secret box with the key to the future. But somewhere the chain has been broken, leaving dimwitted, crooked Mayor Cole (Bill Murray) in charge. Only smart, ambitious kids Doon (Harry Treadaway) and Lina (Saoirse Ronan) can save the human race, as Ember’s plumbing and the generator gradually wear out.
Duprau aimed her novel at the so-called “young-adult” market. But this is one of those typical post-apocalyptic stories that so fit our present frame of mind. We’d like to think that the younger generation is going to save us from the messes created and only partially cleared up, then re-messed, over the past two centuries. It’s a story that appeals because the kids have the answers. Doon just knows how to fix that fading generator, even though his career path has been assigned to plumbing repairs, working under the aged Sul (Martin Landau). And Lina is able to piece together a mysterious message from “The Builders,” which has been misplaced in her granny’s closet for decades.
The plot line is uncomplicated by possibilities that would have ruined Duprau’s tidy optimism. For example, why is Ember City only English-speaking? Aren’t there other nationalities worth saving in the human race? And wouldn’t there have been pitched battles a couple hundred years before between would-be survivors? There are selfish people in Ember (Mayor Cole and his cohort, Looper, played by Mackenzie Crook). But there are no fiendishly evil people bent on destroying the known world (come to think of it, that already happened).
Because Ember is a city under the lights, the film is shot on sound stages, which gives things a yellowish, monochromatic, claustrophobia-inducing feel. For all that, the sets are truly amazing. In their detail, they have the feel of Terry Gilliam’s retro-futuristic dystopia in Brazil (1985), without its more sinister and disheartening elements.
The lightly experienced Gil Kenan (Monster House) directed from a script by Tim Burton protégé Caroline Thompson. The cast is superb. For example, besides Murray (who tones down his sardonic persona here), there is the diminutive Toby Jones playing the mayor’s doorkeeper Barton; Mary Kay Place as the manically cheerful Mrs. Murdo; veteran character actress Liz Smith as Granny, who has lost track of why the secret box is so special; Tim Robbins as Doon’s tinkering father, who has a secret of his own; and twin toddlers Amy and Catherine Quinn as the tagalong Poppy, who is there for the cute factor rather than any acting ability (Poppy utters not a single line but is called upon to look wide-eyed at crucial moments). Landau’s performance, even at its brevity, is the gem of the lot.
This is a film that most kids can see comfortably. There’s no sex, extreme violence, drug use or other illegal activity (unless hoarding outdated canned goods is a crime in Ember). There are some frightening scenes, like the attack of a giant omnivorous mole, and a scary, roller-coasterish ride, but no one dies as a result. The appropriate age group would identify with our appealing young heroes (Ronan has a real career ahead of her). But the younger ones might be bored before the heavy action begins. And that’s to their credit.
Rated PG for mild peril and some thematic elements.

