Revisiting the eerily prophetic Children of Men

In the wake of terror attacks, Brexit, the wave of refugees from the Middle East and Africa washing into Europe, the frenzy over immigration, the decline in childbirth, and the increase in euthanizing the elderly and disabled—one movie is worth viewing. It captures all these societal upheavals, and it came out a decade ago.

When I recently watched Children of Men (2006), its prescience gave me goosebumps, as did its Christian symbolism. The thriller is based on a book of the same title by P.D. James, the British author, though the movie significantly adapts parts of the book’s plot. James called her book “a Christian fable.” As a caution: the film is rated R for intense violence, some language, and a brief nonsexual shot of a naked pregnant woman.

The story is set in 2027, when humanity has become mysteriously infertile. A baby hasn’t been born in years. In James’ book, adults start treating pets as children. At the opening of the movie, a crazed fan stabs the youngest person alive, who is a celebrity due to his youth (another disturbingly relevant detail). The world goes crazy with grief. Set in a gray London, the movie shows adults going about their lives with an air of futility. Everywhere the government advertises “Quietus,” a suicide drug.

“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in,” says a midwife, recalling the early days of the global infertility epidemic.

Here Britain is one of the world’s last functioning governments (the ultimate Brexit), and therefore swamped with immigrants. The government sends refugees, derisively called “fugees,” to camps, where some form jihadist groups. Again: the wave of refugees to Europe began about a year ago, and this movie came out 10 years ago.

As the movie opens, our everyman hero Theo (the excellent Clive Owen) buys a cup of coffee. A few moments after he walks out, the shop explodes: another terror attack. That scene provides one of the many memorable visual moments in the film, a silhouette wanders out of the bombed shop holding her own severed arm.

Theo is shaken but wants to go about his bureaucratic job. He finds himself swept into intrigue when his former spouse, Julian (Julianne Moore), convinces him to help a refugee girl. Theo finds himself caught between Britain’s autocratic anti-immigration government and a brutal, leftist, revolutionary group called the Fishes.

The film has Christian symbols and references throughout. There’s a sort of nativity scene. One shot has a refugee woman weeping over her dead son in the street, a modern Pietá. The title, according to both James and director/writer Alfonso Cuarón, is based on Psalm 90: “You return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’ For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” The movie closes with the final line from T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.

In addition to the meaty story, this film is visually nuts, thanks to the team of director/writer Cuarón (Gravity, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant, Birdman, Gravity, Tree of Life). We get several of Lubezki’s now-famous long single-shots. Lubezki and Cuarón created scenes I will never forget: an ambush of a van, and a battle between British forces and the Fishes in the refugee camp.

Cuarón’s film remains relevant a decade later not just because he was prescient about current events. It is relevant because he understands the fundamental role of hope in a society—and James would say, specifically Christian hope. First Thing’s Alan Jacobs, reviewing James’ book in 1993, said the story showed “the uselessness of liberal theology in a time of profound crisis.”

Here in 2016, the setbacks in pro-life laws, on religious freedom, and the decaying value of childbearing in general are important by themselves. But together, these are indicators of a society in despair. When parents abort a child with Down syndrome, that has to be partly an expression of despair that they could ever care for such a child.

Like good dystopian stories, Children of Men heightens the stakes to show that despair more starkly. When a society has nothing external to live for, when children are gone from playgrounds, the fabric disintegrates. A society without hope resorts to extrajudicial murder and tyranny to achieve its outcomes. A society without hope fosters revolutionaries like the Fishes who will do anything to achieve their desired outcomes. A thick social fabric is based in hope, not self-interest or practicality. And that’s why Cuarón’s superb movie will always be prophetic for our times.