Children of Men review

Oh, and this is Paul; I'm making a break with my sordid past. To reduce confusion, this will be my last handle and email change.

Hi Paul, good to see you back.

"At the same time, the politics are muddled by religious allegory. The film's dependence on a savior figure (the heroine's child) undercuts it: for all the hardships our characters endure, in the end, rather than having to find hope they are simply given hope. That's very disempowering. Early in the film, a propaganda piece claims "only Britain soldiers on" -- do we not need to make our own meaning in life, and soldier on? Must we have a divine (at any rate, inexplicable) intervention to keep from destroying ourselves?"

Thats an intersting perspective. Perhaps the film could have been clearer on where it stands in terms or religion. I found that the impact of the childs presence was not so much underpinned by its miraculousness, but rather the extreme nature of the scarcity of its kind - which entailed an amplified appreciation for its preciousness and qualities as a baby. I never got the impression the child's gravitas had much to do with any reacting characters religious beliefs. But of course you could aptly call it the 'miracle baby'. Although I don't think its birth was all that inexplicable compared to the infertility idea. Wouldn't it just be considered a likely albeit extremely rare deviation.

The child was posistioned as a saviour, but I found it more interesting and compelling than your run of the mill "divine" saviour. It didn't prevent the killing, it briefly halted it. I never got the impression it simply delivered the characters from their hardships - it created a few though. I also assumed there would be much more to hardships to endure long after the closing scene.

I felt that as a source of hope the child was the opposite of disempowering. I think it represented a returning of power.

i think the baby was suppose to represent belief in the future, as in there will actually be one, as opposed to the lazier more commonly accepted (almost feteshistically obsessive) belief these days that the world is heading toward some firey apocolypse.

Thanks for posting this, Paul. I also had a mixed reaction, and I think you did a very good job of articulating the ambivalence I felt. To me, the film's greatest value was in the act of viewing it, and not so much in analyzing its socio-politico-cultural manifesto. That's a good thing, and it illustrates well what I mean by movies being an experiential medium.
Dramaturgically speaking, Theo's motivation needed to be more specific. The threat of his own death at the hands of the rebel group was too central, too universal, and therefore generic.

I'll just mention that I couldn't help comparing it to another recent "science fiction" movie, since both films deal with the same premise, but with wildly diverging purposes and results. (Coping with the consequences of worldwide sterility.) In Children of Men, the filmmakers at least had enough respect for the viewer not to use the spontaneous re-emergence of natural birth as a deus ex machina.

"...spontaneous re-emergence of natural birth as a deus ex machina."

Hehe, I still haven't seen children of men, but that was pretty funny.
I don't know why, but it also bugs me when miracles happen in movies which are attributed to the great and undying spirit of man, or the work of a mysterious divine like agent. I guess it kind of seems like a copout. There's no quicker way to make all of your characters three dimensional than to have them helpless before an unseen force. Real people deal with real problems in real ways. It's all too complicated to just be summed up by the word "mystery."
But then I'm ranting.

I agree with the deuce ex machina gripes, but is there any place in a narative for this type of mechanism? Is it possible for real characters to percieve "real problems" and their "real answers" as mystical occurances or unexplained? In Alphaville, I think it's lemmy caution, say's something like, "...it's like that, you don't understand anything and then one day you end it in death" I think this is a very realistic way of looking at how human characters see the world; Pragmatic, omniscient points of view seem to be the exception. For this reason, I was not disturbed by the baby in "Children of Men"

"Pan's Labyrinth" has some examples of this perspective. The natural percieved by the characters as the supernatural.

I also don't understand the critique about the "battersea power station" segment. I didn't see the theme of accepting diversity among the film's core themes; I didn't see the artist and the child as negative stereotypes; I even missed that the artist was homosexual. I thought that these two characters represented different perspectives on what the legacy of mankind would be, philosophical outlooks on how the end would be approached by some, specifically the afluent. The boy had a "fiddling while the titanic sinks", vibe. Something that I admired about the character of the man with the irish wolf hound is that it seemed that he was really in touch with what he valued as the legacy of the human race. Eternal Values. Maybe I missed that part. What else did you see, Polyencephalic, to make you feel this way?

"Is it possible for real characters to percieve "real problems" and their "real answers" as mystical occurances or unexplained?"

Ronald, would you be able to elaborate on what your saying?

sure, I'm just posing the question that 'does the analogous connection of the unexplained child birth in "Children of Men" to the "virgin birth" of christianity make the child birth in "children of men" a mystical deus ex machina?'
more specifically as a question about jaldridge's post, "...Real people deal with real problems in real ways. It's all too complicated to just be summed up by the word "mystery.""
Do unexplained events within a narative, even if they are seen as mystical to the characters within the story have to be seen as mystical by the viewer. Not to be argumentative, but I think that it's very common for the unexplained to effect real life naratives. In the case of Children of men, I didn't see the child birth as any more mystical than the lack of human procreation. I was caught up in the spectacle, the cinema. In a way, maybe that's the biggest flaw of the film (IMHO), it was a thin collection of ideas held together by a powerful spectacle.

I thought the conversation about the fact that the mother had no idea who the father of her baby was served to discourage viewing her baby as religiously significant. She talked about how the father was just another guy she'd shagged and forgotton. Thats hardly behaviour befitting a Virgin Mary.

I agree with what Peter said about the films greatest value being in the act of viewing it.

After seeing it and thinking about its ideas, i think the film works, without any particular religious or political standpoint, as a reasonably valid and interesting critique of humanity.

People often become so enamoured of their beliefs and positions that they will do terrible things to theselves just to uphold them. Childeren of men uses the "don't know what you've got till its gone" syndrome to show that just about all people, despite their differing convictions, can agree that childeren and the ability to give birth to them, are important things.

I'm not sure about the Lord of the Files comparison, I think the films suggests that people are always beastly to each other, and without the ability to procreate that behaviour would catch up very quickly.

New person here, with my two cents. I'd agree with Peter that films are experiential - they're emotional - Children of Men very much so. Yeah, it was pretty didactic, a bit heavyhanded, but it worked so well on so many levels. The birth represented hope in a world that had abandoned hope - a handy definition of hell. And rather than making me feel complacent, as Polyencephalic suggests, 'giving me renewed faith in my own world', the story seemed a clear warning that if we keep on our current path, this is what we have to look forward to. The Battersea scene made me feel guilty, as I think was the intention - maybe it was even an admonition to everyone in the audience - just by going to the cinema, we're all effetes who'd rather contemplate beauty than look at how shit everything's become.

Still, that's a beautiful point about it being an inverted Lord of the Flies - adults being beastly when there are no kids around - brilliant, hadn't thought of that at all!