There’s a group of us at work that have a monthly ‘movie night.’ Last night one of my comrades showed the recent Children of Men. I’ll admit, I wasn’t that enthused about the choice. I’d heard lots of good things, but frankly as a sci-fi guy I’d undoubtedly seen dozens of similar ‘end of days’ plots in various movies and TV shows, especially during the ’70s.
The movie is actually pretty good, although not as impressive (to me, anyway), as I had heard. Partly this was because I was proven right, only more than I had imagined.
GENERAL PLOTLINE SPOILER:
I never want to assume somebody wouldn’t want to see a movie with as little knowledge about it as possible–generally, my preferred state–but the deal with Children of Men is that it takes place in a world where mankind mysteriously ceased having children about 18 years ago. Put bluntly, mankind is dying out, and will be gone from the face of the Earth sometime in the next several decades.
As a result, the entirely world has gone even more nuts than usual, and apparently Britain (or maybe that’s exaggerated government propaganda) is the only country left standing. As such, it’s being swamped by illegal immigrants, which the government deals with inhumanely, which in turn has inspired the existence of a terrorist organization attempting to overthrow the government.*
[*By the way, it’s hard to get an idea of whether this government is merely brutal, or in fact horribly corrupt, too. And kudos to the film for leaving the question open. If it’s the former, I would argue that the government’s actions are in fact warranted. We’ve all seen post-apocalypse movies where marauders attempt to breach the heroes’ sanctuary and we cheer as they are murderously rebuffed. In a way, that’s exactly the situation the British government is facing in his film.]Anyway, that’s the backstory. The main story involves a man who gets caught up in the effort to sneak out of the country the first pregnant woman the world has seen in nearly two decades. As noted, Children of Men is very well made, and certainly more dour and naturalistic than American films tend to be.
However…I couldn’t get over that plot. Because there are all sorts of awful, cheap post-apocalyptic flicks with pretty much that exact same plotline. Most obviously there’s the Italian 2019: After the Fall of New York, where, per the IMDB, “A mercenary named Parsifal is hired by the Federation to infiltrate New York City, which is controlled by the Euraks, to rescue the only fertile woman left on Earth.”
Not exactly the same, but almost a riff on the same general idea. Nor is 2019 the only junky sci-fi action flick to revolve around a he-man o’ violence who must escort a ‘female savior of the human race’ character to, as in Children of Men, secret sanctuary where she may forestall our extinction. See also Cyborg, starring Jean-Claude Vanne Damme.
I will say, while I get the ‘miracle’ element of a woman having a baby in Children of Men, I really also didn’t get what the big deal was all about. Unless the secret place she was hoping to flee to somehow managed to use her to figure out how to cure the race’s infertility, then so what? It’s not like one kid is going to keep the human race going. My friends seemed aghast when I raised this question of whether the hero’s quest here was entirely pointless in a larger sense, but all they could talk about was the ‘hope’ the kid would offer the world, etc. Hope of what, though? Again, one instance of fertility doesn’t exactly help.
Anyway, both films are available on DVD and Netflix, so you may find it amusing to watch them back to back some time.
