Gritty and great drama

I’ve written before about the irony of the release at Christmas of a futuristic film about a bleak and dire world that has become infertile, in which one pregnant woman carries the hope of all mankind. I saw the previews and it was intriguing. But seeing bad reviews and being too busy, didn’t get out to see it.

Until last weekend. One of my great film critics, Kris, recommended I go. So I did, and was amazed by the profundity I saw in this gritty, dark, ugly picture of a world seized by fear, hatred and terrorism. I wanted to write about it, but haven’t had time yet, and didn’t quite know what to say…

Thanks to my friends over at Godspy, here’s a perfect analysis of the film that expresses a lot of what I saw in it, and a good deal more.

In Children of Men, a loose cinematic adaptation of (P.D.) James’s novel of the same name, birth control is taken to its logical extreme: women have become infertile and the tie between sex and pregnancy has been irrevocably severed. While pro-abortion advocates insist on the primacy of an individual’s right to choose the most convenient time for a child to be born, the “hook” of the movie mirrors that of the book: what if God took away that choice, not by eliminating birth control but by eliminating birth?

As I watched the film, I was hoping the audience ‘got’ that message.

In Children of Men, humanity is moving…towards a pack-animal mentality—suspicious, ghettoized and violent. With the human species on the out, the brakes of society have come off. News broadcasts give glimpses of once-great cities toppled by fear, panic and rioting…As mankind’s expiration date draws near, what would prevent civilization from falling prey to the second law of thermodynamics?

Entropy has a human face in the protagonist, Theo Faron. (“Theos” is Greek for God, so perhaps I spoke too soon when I said His name isn’t mentioned in the movie.) A one-time political activist turned listless alcoholic and cog-in-the-bureaucratic machine, the loss of Theo’s young son, Dylan, and humanity’s ticking time clock have sucked the joy from his life.

Let me insert here that, just as I did on my radio show with guest film critics, I review films to analyze our culture and look for some of the not-so-obvious messages, but I don’t ‘recommend’ them. That’s for you to decide.

This film is political in some ways, one of which is its depiction of immigrant refugee detainment and treatment. But interestingly, the young lady who is pregnant is a refugee from Africa, and she needs protection and transport to a group called the Human Project on an unseen island. The mission falls on Theo.

Getting them there tests Theo’s courage, resolve, ingenuity, and willingness to risk his life, just as he’s re-discovered a reason to live. Like Joseph, Theo becomes protector to a young woman miraculously pregnant, and surrogate father to her unborn child…

Theo is in every scene and virtually every shot of the movie, and Children of Men is as much about his individual journey as it is about global immigration politics or drawing timely parallels to America’s ongoing woes in Iraq. Much has been made of Cuarón’s “leftist” political agenda because he sets his miraculous conception amid sights of men, women and children packed like animals in open-air cages. The imagery is disturbing, to be sure…but it’s hardly “leftist” to suppose that Cuarón has included it, not because of a political agenda, but because such a policy of detainment, oppression and deportation would be the likeliest eventuality in a society gripped by end-of-the-world fear, paranoia and hopelessness.

Moreover, Curaón’s political vision cuts both ways…his criticisms are woven seamlessly into the fundamentally pro-life fabric of the film: human dignity should never be compromised, and human life, foreign and domestic, young and old, is a gift that should be protected.

This is exactly the message I kept getting clearly as the story unfolded. 

The main theme of this film is the miracle of human life and the dignity of the human person, but as Flannery O’Connor said, “A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.”

I felt like I was watching a Flannery novel in this film.

Theo’s journey is a spiritual one—a relentless baptism of fire as he suffers the loss of loved ones, physical pain and personal sacrifice to protect Kee and her child. His journey is purification through physical and emotional mortification. It’s no accident that Theo ends up pretty much barefoot in the middle of an urban battle as he tries to usher Kee and her child to safety. His bleeding, bare feet signal the pilgrimage-like quality of Theo’s quest.

Theo’s quest, his pilgrimage, takes him to the heart of life-giving love, the love between a parent and a child that is an earthly echo of God’s love for each human person.

The screen may have shown wrenching ugliness, but the story was about this ultimate truth of “each human person,” in a startling contrast of worlds. 

Cuarón accomplishes the near-impossible: his virtuosity is invisible. He orchestrates scenes with a breathtaking mastery that is all the more impressive because he does not call attention to it…

Like a great opera singer, he saves his moments of bracing beauty and most moving lyricism for the climactic aria. In Children of Men, that moment arrives when Theo escorts Kee and her child down a flight of stairs in the middle of a bombed-out building as a battle rages all around them. If I told you that the sound of a baby crying could silence the scream of bullets and the shriek of bombs, would you believe me? Or would you laugh? The effect of this scene will be devastating to anyone who’s felt eroded by the Culture of Death’s incessant attacks on the beauty and dignity of the human person.

This scene is the most stunning sequence in the entire film. It is worth the entire film. I don’t know how anybody watching it could escape these truths.

The movie is pro-life, if not “Pro-Life.” When first confronted with Kee’s child, characters in this film generally rear back and exclaim “Jesus Christ!”—a motif so recurrent that it has to be intentional; then, once they’ve settled down a bit, add reflectively, “it’s a miracle.”

When the first man to see the baby uttered that, I thought “It always is. It always is a miracle, every single time.” And this is why great human and divine drama need not be attempts to remake “The Passion of the Christ.” Because at the core of gritty and grotesque stories of flawed people, like those of Flannery O’Connor, is the story of life. 

In a day and age in which the sanctity of human life is compromised on the personal and societal level by contraception, abortion, euthanasia, population control, terrorism, and war, Children of Men is a film that reminds the viewer with subtle artistry of the miracle that is human life.