Order from Chaos

CHILDREN OF MEN , a review

As a movie, director Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is state-of-the-art. It has incredible action, sound and visual effects. The acting is believable and compelling. However, as a story, it is a promise unfulfilled. It starts with a premise pregnant with questions, implications and possibilities. They are left unasked and unanswered.

The plot is charged by the human world becoming infertile. We are led to believe that everyone responds with despair and chaos as the population ages, perceiving its collective demise with each individual death. The only place that has a semblance of order is England where the people allow a fascist-like rule solely, it would seem, to prevent immigration and remove those who got there. The screen is inundated with exposed animal cages filled with people. This is predictably opposed by a terrorist group, called Fish, who would see freedom for all by violent overthrow.

The story revolves around Theo ( Clive Owen) who is contacted by his ex wife and former fellow activist, Julian (Julianne Moore) who is presently leading Fish. She has a special project for him- to smuggle the only pregnant woman in England, a black immigrant named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) to the coast. They must take a perilous trek across the countryside, avoiding the police and the terrorists. It is a trip which gives the audience a slice of this dark land and era, purportedly the best the world presently has to offer.

Upon reaching the coast, Kee will be picked up by a clandestine ship sponsored by a mythical organization called the Human Project. It appears that all of humanity’s hopes lie with this child, and everyone wants her for their own purposes. The Human Project, about which no one appears to know the truth- even of its very existence- becomes the Holy Grail for the few honest brokers in this morass. Considering the remarkably areligious and sometimes anti-religious attitude in the film (religious expression is characterized by Islamic extremists or kook cultists), the messianic implication of this ‘only hope’ is ironic and discomfiting. When it appears that they are safe (mother and child are the only ones to get there), the movie ends with the promise fulfilled. The closing credits are accompanied by the sounds of children and an anti-war, anti-establishment song.

I have had to read several reviews just to assure myself that I did not miss something significant. But if I did, so did they, both supporters and detractors. The supporters appear to swallow whole the anti-war message suggesting that none of this would have happened if we could only just get along. One even felt compelled to insert what Cuarón may have wanted to imply, that this looks like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo without actually having seen either. I have worked in prisons in the US and can confidently say that nothing I have experienced comes remotely close to the horrors depicted in the movie. Of course, no one is talking about Nazi Germany, Iraq under Hussein, or any of the numerous other tinpot dictatorships which presently dot the globe. If that reviewer knows otherwise, I am eager to see his evidence. The detractors expose the existence of unanswered questions, poor characterizations of the protagonist, and a murky plot. But they do not explore this more deeply. I will attempt to do so.

There are questions regarding what has happened to this world, what is happening and what will happen, and most central, who is responsible. The flow of the movie demands someone other than the individual to be responsible. It’s the infertility, the government, the war in Iraq, whatever. And it looks outside the individual for the cure- more babies. Even the protagonists rest their only hope on an infant. This would have a bigger impact if it were reminiscent of Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” (“You don’t know what you lost ‘till it’s gone”). But there is none of that. There is no reflection of what the world looked like with or without babies, just a mission to get an infant ‘out of Dodge’, and somehow, He will save the world.

For some inexplicable reason, only humans became infertile. There was no plague, no nuclear explosion, no increase in the ozone- it just happened. This is an event of Biblical proportions, like the Death of the First Born. How can science explain a disease or event that singles out only humans, and all over the world simultaneously, not spreading to reveal some epidemiological source? It doesn’t occur in animals or plants. The world’s food supply appears to be intact. In fact everything appears to be intact except this single, and singular, event. Yet there is no peep of wonderment about this gargantuan, universal, and still personal, catastrophe. The only response offered comes out of a B.F. Skinner laboratory. The stimulus is infertility- the reaction is despair, aggression and rage. The egocentricity of this society reeks. Everyone is feeling sorry for himself for not seeing a future in progeny. In this self pity, they destroy their personal future and well-being. It is no surprise that this self-indulgent society’s favorite drug is a suicide pill.

Are these truly the only possible human responses to a severe crisis? Does Cuarón really believe there is no nobility in humankind, that the sum of his miseries point to governments, militias and events beyond his control? Are peoples’ resources really exhausted when science fails to come up with a solution? Is there nothing an individual can do to elevate himself? This appears to be more a reflection of the director’s own cynicism than the reality I live in. If the viewer accepts this premise, to what extent has he limited himself?

Whatever the cause of the disaster, the response to it is adolescent. Peoples’ willingness to allow themselves to be further subjugated in order to maintain the comforts they have condemns them further. Cuarón would have you believe that dignity was wrested from them, but they removed their own dignity. When Theo and Julian lost their own child, they resorted to indulgent self-pity instead of finding comfort in each other. They exemplified the world who refused to find meaning in their lives, after having discovered that the things they amassed gave them nothing in return.

If anything, this is a deep condemnation of our modern world which promises fulfillment with things, removal of distress with drugs, relationships without commitment, and its concomitant decreasing demographic. If the movie is any reflection of an outcome to our present circumstances, it is to show how detached we are our from feelings and actions, and how irresponsible we have become as a result.

But Cuarón painted a monochromatic picture. There are people who live with meaning. Some genuinely believe in a Creator who is intimate with the world and who deliberately placed us as stewards of the earth. They will say that there are no coincidences and no accidents. They see themselves as responsible for their actions and that they do affect the world around them, even when they do not know precisely how. In response to the catastrophe, some may pray for forgiveness for themselves and all mankind in the belief that redirecting thought and vision does manifest in the concrete. And they know that thought precedes action. Some may accept personal responsibility for not having done enough to ease the suffering of their fellow humans and redouble their efforts to reach out. And they are not for themselves alone. Some may work to find those in despair and offer personal comfort and support, not the anonymous chemical soporifics which offer only unconsciousness and death. And they are the ones who would burst Joy's grape, knowing full well that its companion is melancholy; so would empathize with the despairing.

Some may even take measures to defend the oppressed, hide them, defend them publicly, in media, politics and demonstrations; and protect them against the victimizing authority, even to taking up arms not in terror, not to murder, not to wreak havoc for a ‘greater purpose’, but to defend. One can fight with pure motives, contrary to Cuarón’s apparent beliefs. Again, it is a severe condemnation of a society who would overwhelmingly support such a government, the only one left in existence, and a devastating condemnation of a world who would degenerate into barbarism over such a scenario. If we humans are still that shallow after all that we have experienced in our history, perhaps we deserve extinction for not having aspired to our nobility- the spiritual greatness which makes us unique in the universe.

Of course, the movie has an ulterior motive. Jasper (Michael Caine), a former political activist turned dope dealer, is the amiable control of the movie, a seeming place of sanity. A pan of his wall shows highlights of his career, including his opposition to the war in Iraq. It appears he was ‘drummed out of the corps’ for his defense of immigrants. But regarding the unfair treatment of immigrants, one should reflect that the audience is given no gram of information regarding their presence in England. We know they are newly arrived. How did they get there? England is, after all, an island whose power lies with the sea. How inundated could they actually have gotten? Are they straining England’s resources, or enhancing them? What does continental Europe look like, and what are and were England’s efforts there? How did the other democracies succumb? Are there no other civilizing elements left in the world that England can bolster? We are looking at a black box and asked to make conclusions about it.

As to the future, there is an unbearable focus on a single baby being the salvation of the world. The Christ-like image oozes like a sour sauce from old meat hoping to be made fresh by removing traces of spirit. People fighting and killing each other pause in their killing at the sound of an infant’s cries, momentarily fascinated by their vaunted hope. Clearly it is only a passing fancy, for the baby barely moves beyond the perilous domain when the shooting resumes. If their aggression and despair was for lack of progeny, it would seem that the presence of a baby would attract more than a passing interest.

If Cuarón’s hope prevails, there will be more babies. But to what benefit? It did not change peoples’ behavior before. It did not even effect them when the only one in existence graced their present. What possible lunacy can conclude a whole slew of babies will change their future? To claim that one’s future salvation lies in someone else removes responsibility, and invites enslavement. To claim the problems of the world lie with others is morally reprehensible and the way of the hypocrite. To claim to be caught up in events is the way of the victim. As Shakespeare’s Henry V said, “Every subject’s duty is the king’s, but every subject’s soul is his own.” In our world view where governments exist by consent of the governed, even the “king’s” duty is the subject’s. No baby is going to save us from the consequences, or rewards, of our own actions, individual or collective. Too often people focus on the grand scale where their influence is minimal rather than on their individual lives where the effects can be more greatly felt. Of course, it is harder to change oneself. Ironically, it is the individual efforts that change the world.

On initiating this review, I was convinced that Alfonso Cuarón was using cinematic technique as a substitute for real substance. But his story does reveal these elements of darkness about the way we live as a consequence of how we believe. Perhaps it was part of his design for the viewer to get below the superficial political and social propaganda to Pogo’s oft stated observation, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” Nah!

Labels: movies, politics, world events

posted by Tiresias in Israel @ 12:29 AM