WHY I LIKED "CHILDREN OF MEN"

Like all good stories, Children of Men borrows much from a number of classics (in this case from the “dystopic futurism”) and remixes the ingredients in an attractive way. We have random terrorism (a la Brazil) in a drastically decimated world (such as the one in 12 Monkeys), and the archetypal grey bureaucrat who saves the day after going through a life-transforming experience a.k.a. love. We’ve seen this classic character in giant novels like 1984 or We, and it never gets old. We do.

In a nutshell: generalized war has made the world go to hell and only the U.K. resists as an enclosed society (irony, anyone?), isolated from these horrors. Life in the island is no picnic, either. For some undisclosed reason, women can’t have children. Terrorism is rampant. Refugees from all nations are rounded and sent to lawless concentration camps. Ray of hope: as the train goes by our main character sees written on a wall: “The last one to die, please turn off the light” Thank God, the human race has not lost the sense of humor. In the middle of this chaos, a refugee woman is pregnant, something the world has not seen in 18 years. What to do? There is a lot of running, an overtly graphic birth and a ruthless bombing. And then there is the ending scene. That’s, pretty much, it.

There is a slight déjà vu all over the movie. In one of its most terrifying moments (and there are quite a few) the director takes us inside one of the concentration camps where we see handcuffed, caged refugees blinded with hoods and displayed in the same positions as the tortured Abu Ghraib prisoners we saw in the press. But terror inflicted by those who should be protecting us is not the only reference to the monsters du jour of western societies: the fear of immigration and the prospects of a society collapsing under the weight of its elderly are present too. That should be plenty to scare the pants out of the viewer. Alas, the director adds visual terror to the psychological one, and along with our pants go our underpants.

Not to spoil the movie to anyone, but only a few characters survive. The one representing good vibe, peace to the world and all that jazz (an old hippy played by Michael Caine who lives surrounded by marihuana plants in a beautiful, hidden house in London’s outskirts) is cruelly shot. The terrorists (the homini lupii in this story) are blown to pieces. Only the state seems to persist, in a torture-based, militarized version of it. But there’s hope for the survival of men (yes, other than puns and irony), in the form of that only baby. Yet, in light of the physical and political state of planet Earth, maybe we should all take our suicide pill already (there is one available, Quietus brand, with a darkly humorous slogan: “You decide when” ) . Actually, the hopeless future depicted in the movie leaves us thinking at the end: what was the point of all this, really? And more importantly: who cares?

Overall, this is a movie who will make you live the rest of your day (or your week) as if there were no tomorrow. For that, and for the couple of glimpses of London in its deathbed (such tired splendor), I liked this film.

© RRC, Ink. 2007