Children of Men: A Lovefest
Written by: The CinCitizens
What Would P.D. James Do?
I might be the only person in this roundtable discussion who came at Children of Men AFTER reading the novel (in fact, I might be the only one of us who has read the book at all!). I picked it up several years ago, after I read an article about P.D. James, calling her the true master of the mystery novel (it was a comparison to Agatha Christie, and this reviewer found James to be Christie’s superior). I had heard nothing of Children of Men specifically; it just happened to be the James novel on the shelf at the library, when I looked.
Having said this, the first thing that I would like to point out is that, to me at least, Children of Men the NOVEL was NOT a story of a dystopic future. (Note that I’m not arguing that the novel WASN’T dystopic, but rather that I don’t remember it as such. In fact, I don’t remember very much at all about it; a point that is telling in and of itself.) In the book, the human population was on the cusp of accepting their annihilation. The youngest generation of humans all had enormous chips on their shoulders, and the rest of the world was scared of them (as though the world was a retirement community, and the “youth” were the scariest pack of teenagers EVER!). Our protagonist found himself with a group of rebels trying to get a pregnant woman to safety, and like the movie, the birth of this child is the seminal moment (pun intended).
The thing about the book is that it felt to me not so much like a science-fiction novel, but a character novel with a science-fiction backdrop. James seemed far less interested with fully exploring the ramifications of her dystopic world than she did with seeing what these particular people would do there. It’s not a bad choice necessarily, but it does take the story in strange directions. From what I can recall, our hero found himself attracted to the mother-to-be, and in conflict with her husband, who was also the leader of their band. That leader was moving them all forward, and it was clear that he saw himself as the savior of all humankind; literally the new father of our people. When his wife reveals (Spoiler here, if you intend to read the book, skip to the next paragraph) that the pregnancy was the result of a love affair with another member of the band (who was by then gone), the huge ramifications of this betrayal are felt by all the characters, and yet the story always feels small somehow, as though the world never extended beyond this small band of people.
This is maybe what impressed me the most about the movie. The filmmakers basically took a scenario (a world where all women stopped giving birth at the same time) and a concept (one young woman, years later, mysteriously becomes pregnant) from the novel, and ripped it wide open, exploring that idea from seemingly every possible angle. They then placed it in a plausibly near future, and played it with the utmost seriousness and sincerity. The result was a movie based on complete fiction that nonetheless felt logical, chilling, and complete. When the sound of the baby’s cries are first heard in that tenement house, the resonance of everyone’s response was simply astounding.
One other thing I find interesting about this movie –something that sets it apart from other films in its sub-genre– is that it’s uniquely without a “message.” When you think about any other visions of a future dystopia, they were almost always created as a warning of some kind. 1984, for instance, was without a doubt Orwell’s warning to mankind not to let government gain too much power over its people. Brave New World, when you get right down to it, was Aldous Huxley’s treatise on the power of religion, and the dire consequences of replacing God with technology. Hell, it could even be argued that The Matrix and Terminator movies are statements against man’s over-reliance on computers to do our thinking for us.
But what is Children of Men trying to tell us, other than “IF mankind ever gets to a point where our future existence is impossible as a species, then anarchy will rule.” O…kay. Frankly, while I actually LIKE the “messages” hidden in the aforementioned films even if I don’t agree with them, I also think it’s refreshing in this case, for COM merely to take a concept and explore it, without the added pressure of trying to TEACH something.
I will turn my already overlong section over to the others with a question that has always bugged me about this story, yet probably only serves to highlight the deficiencies of my overly analytical mind. In both the novel and the movie, this impending baby is seen as the true harbinger of hope for mankind, and frankly, I just don’t understand why? How does one baby mean that the human animal is any less fucked? Is it the mother? If so, then even spitting out one baby per year until menopause, she’s only going to produce 20-25 kids. It can’t be the father, because in both versions the father is rendered obsolete. And if it’s merely the IDEA that one baby being born means that others will get born too, then I’d have to say not only that this is not necessarily true, but also that if it is, then this particular child is not THAT important. What am I missing here?
-Rob van Winkle
The Medium is the Message
Rob-
Interesting points. I guess my answer to the question you finished with about what they hoped to gain from one woman being pregnant was simply that scientists could maybe figure out why she was able to conceive and then apply this to other women who were still physically young enough to conceive. And thus hopefully save humanity from extinction. I think that the woman was the true prize, not the baby.
On to more thematic territory. I would respectfully disagree that COM is without a “message.” To me, the message was one of the big things about the movie that lifted it from being a very well-done action movie to being one of the few essentail movies made this decade. The basic message was, “If we don’t stop being apathetic about all the things we’re doing to ourselves and our planet, this is the shit we’re going to get ourselves into.”
It’s not as explicit as the messages in the other seminal dystopic narratives, 1984 and Brave New World, and I suspect that is what you mean when you argue this isn’t a “Message Film.” (And just to show I’m not being a rhetorical crank splitting hairs over what is and isn’t a “Message,” I would argue that there is no true Message in the classic dystopic movies Brazil and Blade Runner–and this is one reason why COM is a more complete and better movie than both). But this secret Message suffuses every frame of COM. Everything the filmmakers show us highlights where the artists think the world is headed in the next 20 years (or 40 years, or eventually). Basically, it’s about a world that’s been ravaged by global warming and globalization run amok , filled with millions (billions?) of refugees from these disasters and their fallout, and the resultant anarchy that escalates on an exponential basis when so many people are ripped out of the cultures and countries that used to sustain them. As people overbreed and resources run scarce because of climate change and the unsustainable strain created by so many people, countries are overrun one by one by the hordes of people who are forced to find refuge someplace else. This deluge eventually overwhelms these countries, turning its inhabitants into even more refuges. And so on, until “Only Britain Soldiers On.”–and soldiers on rather pathetically, of course, as a broken promise of Western civilization.
Most importantly, it’s a world where the political response to these conditions was selfish and short-sighted. Rather than addressing the global issues that created the shit storm that was brewing, politicians took the easy way out by stoking the fears of their constituents and building walls around their First World havens, wishfully thinking they’d be safe for eternity inside their Green Zones. The people who lived lives of comfort in the First World took the easy way out–they lived their comfortable lives rather than made sacrifices and long-term, uncomfortable plans to reverse the trends that were leading the world to Shit Creek. How do I know this when this isn’t directly talked about in the movie? Well, how could it be any other way? And isn’t that the way we live now? And isn’t COM, like all good movies about the future, really about the present?
That’s why Theo is given the backstory he is. He’s someone who used to care, a former agitator for reform who lived his true life on the barricades. He was alive and (wait for it…) fertile. He had a kid. Then he lost the kid, and he (and the world) became infertile (through some sort of Old Testament God-like punishment). He became apathetic, resigned that he as an individual couldn’t do anything in the face of all these horrors, buried his head in the ground, and just set out to live the most comfortable life he could as everything was slowly snuffed out around him. The story, then–and the Message–is that he finds meaning in life when he starts to care again. When he tries to make a difference.
End sermon.
The great thing about the movie is that it makes this very preachy Message *fun.* It’s full of great camera tricks, production design, and action done in a ground-breaking real-time, you-are-there way. It’s the happy confluence of an Important Message Film and a Rolicking Entertainment. I think one of the genius things about the adapted screenplay and the fimmaking approach was to make all this Message part of the background of the film. It’s all there in the production design of where and how people live rather than in long-winded monologues (like the one I just wrote). This is what makes COM the kind of movie that lets you take away as much as you put into it. If you just want an entertaining, scary film set in the near-future, it gives you that. If you want to get some sly commentary on the State of Things, it gives you that too–in the details. The very hard-to-miss details. I’ve always contended that one of the requirements of being a Great Film is having just this sort of canvas for people to project their own profundities onto. The canvas has to be just detailed enough so people have a solid place to do their projecting, but abstract enough that they’re not being told exactly what to think.
Tony: Point taken about film being the medium where COM lives its greatest life. That’s a very astute way to put it. I’m racking my brain right now for a book/movie combo that feels equal, where you can’t definitively say “The film is good, but the book’s awesome,” or vice versa. The best thing I could come up with is Trainspotting, which is sorta equally great on the page and on the screen. Each is a unique, viscrerally thrilling experience wallowing in the much of heroine addiction. LA Confidential is another possibility: the movie is much less ambitious than the book, but the book (I felt) sort of failed in the overambitious parts that were cut from the screenplay. So they’re both good, and both fall short of some sort of platonic LA Confidential ideal level.
Usually, however, the best case scenario is the one you painted for 1984: the movie is very good…but come on, it’s the novel 1984, by George Orwell. (Which I recently reread, and just let me say JESUS that is a helluva book.) Can anybody think of any other examples where you can’t definitively pick the medium in which a narrative lives its greatest life?
(Also, Tony, do you really want to throw down by claiming LOTR found its greatest life on the screen rather than the page? Because I’ll fight you tooth and nail on that one. Perhaps that’s a whole other essay.)
What say you guys?
-Lance Carmichael
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