Children of Men
A little bit of a throwback this week, I’m going to discuss the brilliant Alfonso Cuarón film, Children of Men.
When I was younger, I spent considerable time making pop culture lists as if I were a character from Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity. I understand that the point of this novel is that this particular obsession isn’t healthy and is a symptom of these characters’ states of arrested development, but what can I say? I was a teenager.
Ok, maybe it lasted into my twenties.
I no longer obsess over these things, and I can now acknowledge that comparison in art is a largely futile and caustic exercise. I’ve come to detest the absurdity of award shows that attempt to grade acting performances as if they were sporting events.
Having said that, if you made me list my favorite films of all time, Children of Men would be high on that list.
There used to be a litany of movies I repeatedly returned to as one would to a security blanket. Regardless of whatever chaos I had created in my personal life, I could always turn on a familiar movie and fall into it for a few hours. Children of Men was one such movie.
These movies have an odd place in my heart. They’ve become tethered to my rather regrettable past and are tainted by that. When I think of them, I don’t simply think of the film but instead of the person who used to watch that film obsessively. As such, it’s nice for me to revisit these films now with my wonderful and brilliant partner. I reclaim them from that muddy past and frame them in a new light. I also see them through her eyes and hear how she interprets them through a modern lens.
(I’ve learned that it’s not appropriate to stare at her as we watch these movies and ask after every scene if she’s enjoying herself. Apparently, this is not the ideal way to view a film.)
Children of Men is a film I’ve spoken to her about many times. It's one of those movies that’s iconic to those who have seen it and, according to my partner, invisible to those who haven’t. Aside from me, she’d hardly heard of it.
I won’t turn this into a pop culture critique or a pretentious dissection of what’s wrong with our current media-consuming society. There’s nothing more nauseating and overdone than a white man in his thirties informing you that your taste isn’t valid.
Instead, I’d rather just say that you should watch this movie. It’s terrific. It holds up remarkably well and, unlike some great films, it’s a lot of fun.
Despite a previous post regarding my annoyance with spoiler culture, I will do my best to avoid blatant spoilers. That being said, there’s a significant plot point that’s technically a spoiler that I will discuss. It’s revealed early in the film and is mentioned in most descriptions, but still, I thought I’d warn you.
Ok, now is everyone who doesn’t want it spoiled gone? Good. Let’s continue.
The film's basic premise is that no one can have children, which has, rather predictably, thrust the world into chaos. Theo (played by Clive Owen) is tasked with transporting a young woman to a group that works to fix society and plan for its future. We discover (SPOILER) that the woman he’s transporting is pregnant – the first pregnancy in eighteen years.
Part of our motivation for watching this was the recent HBO series The Last of Us which shares a similar premise. I won’t compare the two but suffice it to say Children of Men emphasizes different aspects of a world in chaos.
Watching a movie years later is always an interesting experience. A part of you worries it won’t hold up in today’s world. That it will feel dated or stale in some way. This movie is much the opposite. It feels as current today as it did when it came out, and, in some ways, I think it’s more apt to today’s world.
Cuarón builds a beautifully textured world without doing much explanation. The opening scene illustrates everything you need to know for the film. It shows you the world rather than telling you about it. You see that there hasn’t had a new baby in eighteen years, that people are going about their daily life (working soul-crushing office jobs and getting coffee in the morning), and then, through an explosion, you see how chaotic the world has become. Chaotic but predictable, as even the people with debris on their jackets go to work.
The mundane nature of the apocalypse is remarkably current. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had in the past few years about how we were all still working despite so much of the world collapsing and what it would take for us to stop. In this way, the world of Children of Men is far more authentic than the dystopian visions of so many other films. Whatever comes, whatever catastrophe befalls us, we seem to keep going. We complain and feel our lives slipping away, but we go to work every day (remotely or otherwise). We do the laundry and clean the bathroom. Life goes on.
We do this out of perverse comfort. To give up the daily grind would be to acknowledge that chaos. It would be to admit that things are hopeless.
Guns are a fascinating aspect of this film. Where something like The Last of Us glories in the importance of guns in an apocalyptic society, Theo never touches a gun in Children of Men. This is a fascinating decision for a movie like this. Others carry guns, and there’s an iconic firefight (one of the great scenes in film history), but our protagonist never sees the need for one. He never picks up a discarded gun, never points one at someone’s head in anger or calculation, his weapon doesn’t define him as is so often the case for protagonists in these kinds of films.
This decision places Theo outside the two warring factions that define the world – the revolutionaries and the military. He doesn’t support either. He doesn’t care about who gets to shape the future. He simply wants a future, and the film illustrates that guns only deter that future.
There’s a steady, insistent fascism that lives in the film, which is highlighted by the immigrant camps, militaristic police, and media propaganda. Again, this feels even more apt to today’s world than it did in 2006. They were dealing with the post-9/11 racism and fearmongering of the Bush era, but it's hard to argue that those aspects have lessened in the nearly two decades since.
Another prescient aspect of this film is the core crisis – infertility. No one knows what’s caused it or how to fix it, but it's there. Over the past few months, there has been increasing discussion about declining birth rates. It isn’t the same crisis that the film depicts, but it’s similar. Much like in the film, there are many possible reasons for declining birth rates, but instead of addressing any (economic inequality, uncertainty over the future, environmental impacts), the world of Children of Men turns to authoritarianism and fear.
Despite what I’ve described above, this movie is terrific. It's funny and warm at points in a way that so many dystopian works cannot manage. My mother has a great adage that every movie should have some humor. I’m sure there are exceptions to that rule, but nothing’s duller than a movie that takes itself too seriously and can’t admit that there’s humor even in the darkest times.
If you’ve never seen it, go watch it. It's exciting and funny, and upsettingly relevant to our world.
Now next Thursday, I will not be making a post. I will be on vacation (try to manage for a week without me). I will endeavor to have the presidential blog post up on Wednesday, but if it doesn’t happen, you’ll get two for one the following week.
As always, if you know someone who might like this, please tell them about my substack, website, or both. It would be a great help to me. Thanks for reading!