Hap
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—-Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan….
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
-Thomas Hardy
“…why bother, if life’s going to make its own choices?”
-Michael Caine as “Jasper” in Children of Men
Many films of the past have portrayed the ultimate decimation of mankind and desolation of the earth through battles against such epic monsters as giant insects, giant mammals, aliens, diseases, and the list goes on. It’s been an entertaining genre for the thrill-seeking film enthusiast, to see how creatively film makers can bring about the destruction of the earth.
Time has brought us to an age where, though the same themes of films and novels remain popular, the agent of evil that is brought upon mankind is a little closer to our perception, and not nearly as outlandish. Concerns about the end of the earth being brought about, not by a 60 foot green monster from Mars, but by the human population has manifested itself into both the film industry and literature.
Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” is an exciting and emotionally moving film about the bleak future of our world in which the infertility of women has turned the earth into a chaotic, desolate, and war-drenched reality. There have been no births in 18 years, and the tragic death of the current youngest human being on the planet opens the film to a crowd of desperate and shocked faces glaring at the TV screen of a street-side coffee shop.
Theo Faron, (played by Clive Owen) is the disillusioned, less-than-heroic hero of the story, whose obvious vulnerability as a simple human being allows the viewer to not just sympathize, but empathize with his struggles as many people have some idea of what it is to feel so isolated or so afraid, almost to the breaking point, as Theo does. The world has become a fiery playground of a war-hungry nation that has slipped into paranoid frenzy, intent on securing “their homeland” and “their way of life” by driving out every immigrant in England. The film is colored in a vast palate of black and grey, and from the very beginning we are drug into the decrepit ruins of a world that has been, and is now moving on, very likely to the end.
The little coffee shop that Theo has just left is blown to bits and screams are heard from every direction. Within the background of the score we hear a high-pitched ring, like the loud ringing in the ears after a concert, or after being in a club all night. This phenomenon is explained later by Theo’s ex-lover Julian Taylor, (Julianne Moore), after Theo is caught on the streets at gunpoint and shoved into the back of a huge grey van. She is revealed to be an important player of a group, the “Fishes”, which has dedicated itself to protecting and restoring the rights of immigrated people. The ringing you hear is the sound of ear cells dying, their “swan song” so to speak, she says. “After it disappears you’ll never hear that frequency again”. Julian advises him to “enjoy it while it lasts”. The distracting ringing in the ear reflects the slow decay and inevitable death of the world in which we find Julian and Theo. It is struggling for those last few gasps of breath before the end, and refuses to go down without a fight. Indeed, a violent and hate-filled civil war among an army that is the human race struggling for survival has begun.
Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine) is pretty much the last of Theo’s friends in the world. He is a jaunting, outgoing and hippie-looking old individual with a taste for smoking in its many shades. He lives with his wife, who is nothing more now but a zombie deprived of any hint of human-likeness outside of the shell that is her human body, presumably after going through some horrible experiences during her career as a photo-journalist. All of them are crawling through their lives, trying to stay alive amidst the constant threat of violence from those of opposing opinions regarding instinctual reactions and panicked states. On one hand, the government tries to clean out the cumbersome pests that have made their way into their land looking for safety and security. On the other, those who stand up for those people, but who have fallen into the same trap and lust for violence and rage.
We soon find out exactly for what Julian has contacted Theo for when she explains that she needs to get a certain young woman to the coast. Theo reluctantly agrees and we enter the house of Nigel, (Danny Huston), where he tries to get help. Nigel has managed to partially save some historic pieces of work, but it seems that in this dying world, history plays no significant part. Where the end is drawing near, who has time to appreciate accomplishments of the past?
When Theo finally meets Kee, (Claire-Hope Ashitey), we discover she is a young girl he must help to get to the coast to meet the ship named “Tomorrow” that will take her to safety at the Human Project. She is pregnant.
In a scene where Julian is shot by members of her own group who are later revealed to have different plans for Kee’s child, the music in the background is layered with a tinnitus ring that mirrors Julian’s quickly fading life. Later when they are pursued by the police, two policemen are shot out of panic when Theo’s car is stopped as they are racing to safety and for Julian’s life. They are later portrayed as terrorists who have murdered two cops and should now be considered armed and dangerous. From our perspective, they are innocent bystanders caught up in the madness.
Theo takes up new responsibility as he must guide Kee and her caretaker to safety, after staying with a group of people whose interests are shown to be different from those of Kee.
Theo takes them to the home of Jasper, where he helps make plans for them to be taken to the prison areas where they hold immigrants in order to get where they need to be with the help of an old friend of his, Syd, to acquire a boat and meet the “Tomorrow”. They soon realize they have been followed by their former allies who are now after Kee and her baby to use him (or her) for their own political purposes and after Theo leaves with Kee and her caretaker, Jasper is shot and killed.
In a little shabby, cold room later that night, we witness the birth of Kee’s child, by far the most emotionally evocative and powerful scenes in the movie. Kee is alone, having never been exposed to childbirth or indeed having ever seen a pregnant woman. She struggles through it and in the end produces a beautiful baby girl.
Eventually with the help of Theo, Kee reaches the “Tomorrow” and the birth of hope in that world.
What I loved about this film is its richness in portrayal and allegorical symbolism that so greatly defined one man’s vision of the world as it is and what it will become in the future, should our reckless and massively destructive behavior of consumption never change. There are many interesting subtleties that point us at different facets of human interpretation throughout the movie.
Clad in a bulky, ugly grey pair of socks, Theo’s feet appear front and center in a shot in which Theo is relaxing in Jasper’s home. Throughout the movie, the feet reflect the personal journey that Theo is going through in a more visual, simple, symbolic way. Theo is floating through life at this point in Jasper’s house, devoid of all hope for the future and disconnected from life. The blatant appearance of his relaxed state with his feet crossed and lounging on the table suggest to me his own passive attitude of lost hope and carelessness, as if he has consented to drown in the chaos that has become of the world. He will “put his feet up”, sit back, and watch as it all goes to hell.
As the movie progresses, Theo’s peril and role he has been thrust into wakes him up to the terrors around him and likewise, his bare feet, receiving numerous wounds and pains, are forced to endure the harsh realization that this dying world around him cannot be ignored.
Towards the end of the film, when he finally grasps a hint of hope as plans are made to get him and Kee to the coast, he is presented with a pair of shoes. He has finally found steady ground, and a clear path he can now travel to the end.
Now, instead of being a bystander, comfortable on the couch in his socks and drifting through existence, he is “dressed” in a purpose and a new vision for possible hope in the future with the “Human Project”.
The dining room in Nigel’s home, along with the high tech futuristic video game that occupies his son at the dinner table, is just an example of the many creative touches that reveal Cuarón’s vision. Perhaps most delightfully surprising was the floating inflated pig alongside two tall industrial towers seen clearly outside his windows as he and Theo are talking. “Algie” (the affectionate nickname given to him by his creators, Pink Floyd), floats majestically and can also be seen on the cover of the Pink Floyd album “Animals”. This is a provocative correlation with the themes regarding humanity used within the film. In the album’s lyrics to such tracks as “Pigs (three different ones), “Dogs”, and “Sheep”, the words ominously reflect unique metaphors for human beings; perhaps we are more animal like than the animals themselves. As the philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek comments in the commentary that is provided with the DVD, “a good portrayal looks more like the person portrayed than the person himself”. His observation is that the film portrays a very deep and truthful imitation of reality, a more “real” reality than reality itself that brings out the low, bitter truths, underlying the illusions, which we predominantly prefer to ignore.
Technology in a modern age has changed the face of communication, industry, media, and many other vital areas of societies all over the world. With the onslaught of newer and newer developments, it seems we are constantly running just to keep up with our aspirations. What are we leaving behind? Passing by without so much as a glance?
There is much to be said about the impact of modern technology and progress on the human mind and human relationships. In Richard Stivers’ book Shades of Loneliness, Stivers goes into a fascinating discussion about the effects that modern technology has had on the human population, focusing primarily from a mental perspective. “Technology makes human relationships abstract, and thus impersonal” (17). As we depend more and more for information on the news we see on TV, we create for ourselves a kind of “watered down” version of what is going on, and on top of this, we tend to watch television with a sense of the “constant present”, where watching shows and commercials on TV gives us a sense of being “up-to-date” and in the “now”.
The most critical objectification of experience occurs in the mass media for a number of reasons. First, the media are the paramount source of information for most people. Second, reality appears to be in the media. There appears to be a one-to-one relationship between visual images and reality, even though the media necessarily take images out of their cultural and historical context and thus reconstruct them. (19)
Ironically, there is a growing isolation of people through the advancement of communication forms. We no longer need to go out and meet with a friend or colleague when we can instant message them online, or send a quick text on the cell phone. As philosopher and historian Tzvetan Todorov states, modern technology and globalization allows “isolated individuals to have as much power as a whole state”.
Visual pictures presented to us on TV replace and destroy gradually our sense of meaning and symbolism. “According to Guy Debord, “we now live in a world of visual representation, a mirror world in which the image is more important than and indeed defines reality” (Shades of Loneliness,137).
The effect that I see coming from the massive expanse of industry and technology is the way in which we are inventing and creating more and more ways for us to do less and less of the work; we let the experts handle what we don’t understand, and we consume more and more to fulfill our own personal and isolated pleasures while discarding at leisure what we don’t need, ignoring the consequences. What Cuarón’s film visualizes so vividly is a picture of a world in which all of these human behaviors are taken to the extreme, and through several brilliant devices of symbolism, conveys the essence of human emotions and instincts that may drive us to engage in a destructive and hateful course of action as a mode of survival. The depersonalization of a technological world only deepens and provokes those instincts to desire personal gratification as “television and related media place me at the center of the universe” (137).
The mass media reinforces and deepen the fragmentation and depersonalization that bureaucracy and technology unintentionally create. There is no temporal and meaningful relationship among programs and commercials. Therefore television in its total impact destroys the experience of event time. One is left with duration time, the continuous time of description. (Shades of Loneliness, 136)
The film “Children of Men” has displayed, for me, a brilliant insight into a version of raw reality that we see only after we step out from in front of the television. Personal and symbolic meaning is a vital factor in the human ability to live a life sensitive to other human beings, and to make connections and form personal beliefs regarding the world’s processes. The isolation and fragmentation of people today are conditions to which a massively expanding technological society and globalization contribute, but are not sole causes. The utopian visions for the world encompass many ideas, but the inevitable obstacle is that they cannot coexist, as stated by anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein. No matter what your personal beliefs and political views regarding these issues, I believe “Children of Men” is a fantastic and imaginative creation which showcases the director’s ability to thread into a passionate story the symbolism and connotation that directly relate and directly point to our own human society as it exists in the present.
(Stivers, Richard. Shades of Loneliness: Pathologies of a Technological Society. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. US. 2004.)
I am a second year English major at Wright State University in Ohio. Writing in depth essays regarding my own personal experience with films is something I do for fun.