Children of Men
Reflections on the film 'Children of Men'
Gregor Woods, 10th October 2006
Director Alfonso Cuarón has seen the future, and it's grim. The year is 2027. No child has been born for 18 years and no-one knows why. In the interim, the world has gone to hell, as attested by overheard news clips and discarded newspapers. It is through these scattered pieces of information that we begin to piece together the world in which Theo, played by Clive Owen, finds himself.
Theo, a middle-ranking civil servant, is first seen buying a coffee in Starbucks. He and the other customers are staring at a TV announcing the death of the world's youngest man, an 18 year old Brazilian, in a street brawl. Theo steps out into a London street which is much the same as now, but dirtier, a video advertisement on a grimy red bus the only suggestion that we are in the near future. Moments later, we see Starbucks blown up and the dead and dying scattered across the street. Baghdad has come to London.
Theo is kidnapped by his former wife, Julian (Julianne Moore), the leader of a guerrilla/terrorist group called The Fishes. She needs his connections to provide safe passage out of the country for an illegal immigrant, Kee. Britain has become a police state, with armed officers patrolling the streets and illegal immigrants/refugees held in cages at railway stations before being transported to Bexhill-On-Sea, now a fenced ghetto. Everywhere we see scenes of decay: raw sewage pours into rivers; bags of refuse lie uncollected in piles by the road, the countryside is littered with the pyres of burning cattle. Of all the horrors on display, however, Bexhill provides the most disturbing scenes. In a series of uncomfortable images, we see references to Abu Graib, most clearly referenced by a hooded man standing upon a box, his outstretched hands holding wires. Cuarón wants us to get the message loud and clear: this is now, it's just not here.
The film, loosely based upon a novel of the same name by P.D. James, marvellously maintains the sense of a skewed present; Britain is entirely familiar, but gone bad. The film makes constant references to present anxieties: fear of immigration; paranoia over the outsider; infertility; environmental collapse; euthanasia; terrorism. This could all make for a tediously worthy project, but sermonising is avoided. Instead, we have a gripping drama in which Theo, aided by Michael Cain as his dope-smoking cartoonist friend, is entrusted with the most precious cargo in the world: a pregnant woman, Kee.
It is the birth of Kee's child that provides the film with its first moment of light. Having been born in a filthy flat in Bexhill, the child is finally witnessed by the huddled residents of a tower block, as bullets and rockets hammer into their building. For a few moments, they forget their plight and stare, joyously, as Kee and Theo walk past them. A child has been born and, suddenly, in this desperate place, there is hope that things might just change. Kee and Theo walk past similarly moved soldiers. A commander orders a cease- fire, and all that is heard is the crying baby as Kee and Theo leave the building. For a few moments, we see the soldiers and the refugees as fellow human beings, moved by the sight of a long awaited child. Unfortunately, the peace lasts only a few moments.
Children of Men is a powerful, intelligent and moving experience. The Biblical allusions inherent in the "miraculous" birth of a child to a young woman in desperate circumstances, a birth that may just save the world, are undeniable and deftly handled. It is even confident enough to play with such references, Kee at one point telling Theo that she is a virgin, before laughing at his astonished, incredulous face. The film ends with Kee and her child aboard a rowing boat in the sea beyond Bexhill, awaiting the arrival of their rescue ship. The screen darkens and we hear the laughter of children as the credits roll.
This world is broken, and, Christians believe, so are we. Our best efforts to build a peaceful and fruitful world are constantly doomed. We start out with the notion of a New Jerusalem and end up with Guantanamo. Something is very, very wrong with us.
Children of Men is a stark reminder of where we have got to, and what we are capable of. It shows a world gone to hell. It also reminded me, as a Christian viewer, of the birth of one about whom the prophet Isaiah wrote 700 years before his birth: "Unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government of the world shall be on his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."