Children of Men

The other day I went to the cinema on Boston Common and saw Children of Men. This movie saw its first limited release on Christmas Day, and you know what? That’s fully fitting, and I’ll tell you why.

Imagine the human race became infertile in two years. Not a single child is born after the year 2009, and a concurrent flu pandemic has claimed most of the remaining young. Now, imagine the world in 2027, wracked with terrorism and nuclear destruction. In the face of mass migrations of Third World refugees, your nation clamps down and becomes a quasi-military state, and xenophobia is written into public policy in the form of detention camps. Rebel militias fight the fascist state, and it’s hard to tell which group is the more lawless. Among a captive citizenry, anxiety over the end of humanity prompts religion-fueled hysteria on the one hand, and mass suicide on the other (made utterly convenient and conventional with the legalization of euthanizing drugs).

In the midst of this, imagine you are a drone in the state bureaucracy, somebody who used to give a damn about changing the world, but now drowns his depression in alcohol. The news that the youngest person in the world has died (aged 18 years, 4 months, 16 hours and 5 minutes) barely fazes you, nor the fact that you just cheated death by leaving the café moments before it was bombed.

Then, all of a sudden, you are abducted by the rebels—one of whom is your former lover—and you are given a mission to provide safe harbor for a young African refugee and convey her to the coast. Such a mission would be compromising enough in itself, but there’s a further twist: this woman is pregnant. She does not know how it happened, or with whom, but she is all alone, and she does not know what to do or where to go.

The rebels hope to rendezvous in international waters with a ship named Tomorrow that will bring the refugee to an island community of free men and women called The Human Project. Here, a band of scientists is laboring to cure infertility before humanity disappears. The only thing is, the rebels aren’t sure The Human Project or the ship Tomorrow exists. Your former lover claims they do. The girl has faith that they do.

You’ll never know for sure, because along the way your crew is ambushed by fascist sympathizers, murdering your partner.

Now you are alone among the zealous rebels, whom you don’t trust, and dodging the government, which you trust less. You hardly know this young woman, whose child is not your own, but who is pregnant with all the hopes and dreams of a restored humanity. Gradually, though, you make her cause your own, and you begin to believe in yourself and in life again. Never has your life been at greater risk, and never have you been more alive.

I won’t give away all the plot turns, but three scenes stand out quite clearly. The first is the most luminous: Kee, the refugee so far from home, gives birth to her daughter in some dark, unscrubbed corner of a hovel in the state detention camp. You are the midwife and the only witness. The second is the most transcendent: after being separated from Kee by the double-crossing rebels, you rescue her and the baby amidst an apocalyptic insurrection at the detention camp. Fleeing bullets and bombs from every side, finally staring down the muzzle of a government soldier’s gun, the baby crying at your side saves you at last. The stunned soldier cries for a ceasefire, and you and Kee exit the lodging in which you were trapped. Every rebel and soldier you pass observes the child with reverence, and some bow and genuflect. As soon as you have forded this sea of warriors, a rebel rocket disturbs the tranquility, and the uprising resumes. The third scene is the most affecting: bloodied and badly wounded, you escort Kee to a tunnel in a water station and board a flimsy rowboat, provided for you at great personal peril by a gypsy woman, and set out along a narrow channel out to sea for the ship Tomorrow.

I haven’t seen The Nativity Story, but I don’t think I have to. For those paying attention, Children of Men is a devastating 21st century reinterpretation of the biblical narratives of the births of Jesus and Moses.

***

An aside: this film has a very cool soundtrack, with a melancholy cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.” But I was knocked out by the prominent use of two progressive rock bands, Radiohead (“Life in a Glasshouse”) and, to my great delight, King Crimson (“In the Court of the Crimson King”). I never thought any Hollywood movie would be hip enough to use King Crimson. There’s also a visual connection in the film to Pink Floyd: in one scene you are looking out onto Battersea Power Station, and sure enough, there’s an enormous inflatable pig floating in the distance.

This film is adapted from the 1992 novel by P.D. James. Children of Men is directed by Alfonso Cuaron, who directed the third Harry Potter movie, which, I am told, is the one really worth watching.