Humanities House Fall 2018 Film Series # 1: Children of Men

Alfonso Cuaron’s “Children of Men” is the first selection for the Fall 2018 Humanities House film series.

I’ve chosen to introduce “Children of Men” via a framework that begins with its text — what is the movie about; and moves to its subtext — what is it that the movie is saying. I also want to talk about its context, at the time it was released and as we re-read it in 2018. Finally, I’ll say a few words about the aesthetic of “Children of Men,” particularly Cuaron’s audaciously long scenes without a cut, and juxtapose that technique with examples of his compositional eye, of the still pictures he paints within the movie.

Text

“Children of Men” takes place in a near-future Britain. 18 years ago, the human race lost the ability to reproduce. No one knows why. Most societies have collapsed into chaos, despair, and atrocity. The British government has maintained a tense sort of order through surveillance, a militarized police, and closing the borders to non-British citizens. The protagonist, Clive Owen’s Theo, learns a vital secret about the infertility crisis, which he must deliver to researchers in the perhaps mythical “Human Project.”

Subtext

This premise is the setting for speculations on the secular, the theological, and the eschatological.

Secular authority in this near-future UK is maintained through an authoritarian government that verges on the totalitarian, and so one subtext concerns the cost of maintaining authority, and at what point that cost exceeds the benefit.

The theological referents are many. The protagonist, indeed, is called Theo. At one point, he exclaims “Jesus Christ” in a way that is pregnant with meaning. And theology — the loss of faith, the struggle to go on in desperate circumstances, often looms in end-of-the-world dramas; we might here read the television show “The Leftovers” as a companion text.

Indeed, these eschatological themes are perhaps the most compelling. What, specifically, has humankind done to cause itself to become slowly extinct? Is the chaos in the rest of the world some kind of purgatory, or even an allusion to the periods of tribulation in rapture mythology? Or is the real sin the one being committed by the British state, with its radical xenophobia dehumanizing anyone without the right passport?

Context

The movie read, in 2006, as a comment on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. An early in-movie newscast suggests these wars in the Middle East had never ended — perhaps this is the sin that brought about the end of the world? In 2018, with Brexit Britain choosing to leave a European Union founded on the free movement of peoples, and with President Trump and an unleashed ICE targeting undocumented immigrants, “Children of Men” reads differently. The mass immigrant detention facilities in the movie’s crisis-era Britain, the terrified brandishing of passports the second the police arrive on the scene, the background shots of desperate people in cages — these give the movie a renewed urgency, and speak to its prescience.

Aesthetic

Cuaron’s calling card is his audaciously long, uncut shots, often stretching into several minutes. “Children of Men” features several astounding unbroken sequences, including one which concussively opens the movie and, later, a terrifying ambush shot entirely from within the confines of a crowded car.

These long takes lend a verite feel to the action, the effect is visceral and propulsive.

The no-cut macro aesthetic is masterfully combined with single frame compositions of startling beauty, deeply considered still photographs embedded within this fluid work.

Consider this shot, set in what the movie calls the “Ark of the Arts,” the repurposed present day Battersea Power Station(top).

In the bottom left, is the real Battersea Power Station. The bottom right is the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album “Animals.” Notice the pig suspended between the power station’s towers. The Pink Floyd album title was a reference to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” about the horrors of totalitarianism, like the movie’s totalitarian Britain. And consider the flying pig, the impossibility, the thing that cannot happen. Or can it?

Finally, look at this image from the movie; of a ship called “Tomorrow” owned by the “The Human Project.”

The ship is gleaming and freshly painted. It cuts through the fog, and contrasts with the grime and decay shown in the rest of the movie. A man is pointing toward the future, toward tomorrow. This is a still in a movie, yes, but also a painting in a museum, an illustration of a myth, about a dark time and a struggle to escape that darkness, to repent of those sins.

Stephen Benedict Dyson

Written by

UConn Professor. Author of Otherworldly Politics: The International Relations of Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica. @sbdyson

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade