Children of Men.

[sechan19]

Everything about this film is wonderful. Well, let me clarify that statement. The film features a number of sequences that are terrible, that are frightening, saddening, disheartening. This film evokes a world on the brink of extinction and the desperation and despair that are a necessary part of such a reality. At the same time, it is a tremendously uplifting tale and one that - through its veil of death and destruction - makes the viewer feel wholly and vibrantly alive.

The premise is rather simple. The human race has become infertile and subsequently civilization has crumbled. It's an interesting idea - the idea that human beings would give up so completely and totally without a succeeding generation to carry on the torch. It seems ludicrous. We all die anyway and many of us carry on as if we didn't care for those coming after us, forgetting that we have not inherited this land from our ancestors (as the Native American saying goes) but have instead borrowed it from our children. So what difference would it truly make to us if our species died out? Would the force of evolutionary instinct be so strong as to topple civilization in its hysteria of extinction? Perhaps.

But there's an intriguing underlining theme that walks hand in hand with the above, and that is the notion that children themselves are a civilizing presence without whom mankind is truly lost. In exploring this theme, Children of Men illuminates not just what is wrong in our society, but also what is right. It strives to remind us that there are ways in which we do not completely bollocks it up - a timely and strengthening reminder in this precarious age.

Comments

[alateaqoe.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting in conjunction with the book I just finished, "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. In it he says, "'Children bring happiness' is a super-replicator [an idea that promotes it's own transmission]. The belief transmission network of which we are a part cannot operate without a continuously replenished supply of people to do the transmitting, thus the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it."

So it may not be the force of evolutionary instinct operating in the film as much as cultural wisdom - the belief that without children there can be no happiness and thus no point in continuing.

[reteva.livejournal.com]

That is a far more fascinating posibility than mere evolutionary impetus, and it ties in well with the idea of children as a civilizing presence. They are because of cultural custom. I'd be very interested to read that book at some point... one could no doubt write an intriguing anthropological analysis of both book and film.