Viewed/Read: Children of Men

I finally took advantage of living in Los Angeles and went to see a film in limited release. Of course, all that really means is that for the first time in a year, a movie came out that was intriguing enough to be worth the extra effort and parking fees. Raleigh's highways may be confusing, and Tyson's Corner more crowded than a Wal-Mart on the wrong side of Pennsylvania, but both pale in comparison to the terrors of The Grove.

It was worth it. Children of Men is fantastic.

Assuming you've browsed other reviews, you're familiar with the "most realized dystopian future since Blade Runner" meme. I can't argue with that, though I would add a caveat. Blade Runner is a projection of what the world might have looked like if everything continued to go wrong after 1982. Children of Men depicts a horrible future that is already happening.

The novel The Children of Men uses the premise of an infertility pandemic to explore issues of civil liberties versus security; the consequences of selfishness at personal, familial, and societal levels; and what drives people to power and how power affects those who acquire it. Those aspects are all featured in the film's plot, but it struck me as having a more singular theme: what little value we have for human life. With one or two exceptions, every time a character died in Children of Men, I was shocked. When characters who had only been on screen for 15 seconds were killed, I was horrified. In contrast to the other "serious," "political," and "adult" movies previewed before the film, when something exploded in Children of Men, it wasn't flashy and pretty. It was senseless.

I'm not a war movie person. Even when the message of a war movie is that war is bad, I know a lot of people will watch it and think, "Dude, that part where the guy's flamethrower tank blew up? That was awesome!" What amazed me about Children of Men is that its portrayal of violence was so unglamourous. Even justified deaths lacked satisfaction. You'd have to be a sociopath to enjoy the waste of life in this movie, and this is coming from a guy who thinks a world without children would have its advantages.

The idea that if people became incapable of reproduction we'd still be killing each other is haunting. To imagine that if someone was suddenly able to procreate in such a setting we still wouldn't put down our guns is even worse. But the greatest impact this movie had on me was that this random, pointless waste of life is happening every day, and we just don't see it.

Children of Men isn't science fiction. It's what we ignore about today.