Men Cannot Have Children

Film: Children of Men

Word: Altruism: Merriam-Webster Definition: unselfish regard of or devotion to the welfare of others.

Summary: Children of Men is a film based on the 1992 novel by P.D. James. The film is set in 2027 future England after the collapse of the world and the annihilation of the human race is becoming more and more present. The film starts off with us following Theo (Clive Owen) on a coffee shop disinterested in the sudden news of the death of the youngest person alive, being 18 years old. We start with violence, gritty violence, from an anonymous and random bombing at the coffee shop, to the train where people are throwing objects at the windows, we see the cages “fugies” or refugees are being kept in awaiting their melancholy fate. Theo is a character who seems to be disaffected by the current police state of Britain, who we later find out was once a political activists and still participates in the alternative by visiting a pot smoking Michael Cane, where we learn more about the current state. Theo is later picked up by the “fishies” led by his ex-wife to help find them papers for a girl he is to then travel with, he has no idea what this mission is for but to help his ex-wife and possible find some hope or meaning in his mundane sad life. Theo finds out this girl he is to travel with, Kee, is pregnant, something that has not been possible from the female race for the past 20 years. Theo then decides to help Kee get the “Human Project” a mythical group of people that are to help preserve the human race. This film is gritty, violent, and beautiful. It leaves the viewer on the edge of their seat up to the end. It is shot in a majority of continuous shots – one of the most powerful is during the “uprising” and escape of Theo and Kee to the coast. This film is filled with political and biblical comparisons and illusions, one of the most memorable is that of Kee being the Mother Mary carrying a “Baby Jesus” in a manager- a scene when Theo finds out Kee is pregnant.

The Director Alfanso Cuaron used only natural lighting or made the lighting look as if it were coming from a singular or natural source. This adds a effect to the film that would not have been achieved with the use of traditional lighting techniques. Cuaron also used a film that would allow for the image to not be so heavily affected by the lighting choices he had. In the article “Humanity’s Last Hope” Emamanuel Lubezki talks about his techniques that were used in Children of Men. One of Lubezki’s comments about the long shots was very interesting to me he states, “We did the movie in long shots to try to get the audience to feel they are there.” I felt that he achieved this well. Being one of the things I noticed when watched the film, I felt as if the camera movements and position added itself to making the view feel as if they were a part of it. One of the most influential and greatest scenes was in the last 30 minuets or so when it is a continuous shot through the camp when Kee and Clive Owen’s character, Theo, are attempting their escape. you can tell in one part that there was a small cut, which the blood was wiped off the lens but it still continued in a way that made it seem as if it were a continuous shot. To me this was really powerful and a made a large impact on my reception and love for the movie.

Onto the more political side of the film, Children of Men looks at what the world has become in 2027, with waste, fear, and how women are responsible for the continuation of the human race. This movie focused heavily on the women’s role in society as far as being responsible for human existence. There is nothing to say that women are the cause for infertility and there are billboards all around the state “Avoiding fertility tests is a crime”, but the importance put on Kee, the carrier of the new world baby is so great that it seems as if women are the “key” to finding how infertility happened and how to change it.

Another topic that is faced and very violently is the treatment of immigrants in the now police state of Britain. In this film the world has fallen and “Britain still soldiers on”, with that the patrol is up and refuges that have migrated from their countries to find sanctuary are corralled and almost handled in a Nazi holocaust way, being kept in large crates awaiting transportation to the nearest “camp” that seem to be destroyed cities that are now the cities in which these immigrants are to stay. In the Article “What If…?” Blake states “ Vigilantes patrol our borders in the southwest and the Justice Department launches coordinated raids on meat-packing plants to round up hundreds of undocumented aliens living productively in our country for years.” And continues with a look at the current situation of how borders are controlled how nations have huge gaps between rich and poor and how Children of Men doesn’t seem that far fetched. That was something that I was curious about in watching, is why does Britian the current world super power at this point not open its gates to help the immigrants that clearly have no where else to go. If the world is going to end in a matter of a few decades then what is the point of keep other countries and people out?