Children of Men (2006) I really liked this film, but I freely admit that my reaction is idiosyncratic and that I can understand why lots of other people would be disappointed in the film. This is a high-concept, intellectual movie that is primarily an action flick, and such a film is a set-up for disappointment. Even people who liked the film—e.g., me and ktincu on Spout.com—often give it 4 out of 5 stars, sensing that something prevents this from being the great motion picture it should be. It is an intellectual movie because it a) predicts what the world will be like 20 year from now, and b) examines the ramifications of a world in which all women are sterile—except one. The movie gives no explanation of why the world got that way except to say that, as part of the cause, the loss of children engendered the loss of hope. Many viewers may want more, but, if the film spends its time exploring the primary issue of infertility, then viewers are not really justified in demanding detailed explanations of how the world go so screwed up. Nor are they justified in demanding that the film explain exactly how women became infertile, provided that the film focuses on the ramifications of infertility. So, according to the film, what are the ramification of infertility? The first thing to say is that they are all mixed up with the general collapse of the world’s countries. The secondary issue in the film is illegal immigration: everyone wants into the United Kingdom because it is the only functioning society on earth (the others must be terrible!). But what does this have to do with the main concern of barren women? Still, we can tease out some ramifications. For one, there is a widespread loss of hope. Individual couples, like Theo (Clive Owens) and Julia (Marianne Moore), were probably torn apart by the death of their only child and/or the realization that they could have no children. In addition, certain groups see a child as a political opportunity. Thus the revolutionaries hope to use the world’s only baby as a flag to rally around in overthrowing the British government because of its anti-immigration policies. Other ramifications are small. We see a mid-wife or nurse who’s career came to a bewildering and sad end. We see a desolate elementary school and, by implication, the absence of all those who worked there, who taught and fostered learning and growth. But most of the film is an action flick: Will Kee and her baby get out of the country? Although I prayed that they would make it safely, I had to wonder why it was so important to have one fertile woman if everyone else was sterile. (Apparently one of the many white boys she’d had sex with was not, and maybe other men were not, but how do we know when only one woman on earth is fertile?) For the entire movie, we are not even sure if the mysterious “Human Project” is real, and, worse, we have no idea what it does. Someone says they have a colony in the Azores. So maybe I simply wanted a young mother and an ok guy to escape. Jim Bell
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