Children of Men, a Movie Not to Watch on an Airplane

I made the mistake of watching Children of Men aboard a plane flying across the Pacific. Armed with the knowledge that no passenger plane has ever successfully landed on water, as we went through an area of (what seemed to me) severe turbulence, Children of Men was hardly the most comforting movie to be watching.

In the usual manner of a British production, the acting was tight and understated and we were spared from the need of a love story to justify the movie’s plot. Instead we saw relentless footage of what the world might look like in the event of widespread social breakdown.

The plot is fairly simple. For some unexplained reason, mankind has become infertile and the loss of confidence this catastrophe has wreaked on society has meant that most countries around the world have descended into anarchy. ‘Only Britain soldiers on’, as the government propaganda advertises. With the island nation the only place with any semblance of order (gangs have overtaken the countryside), there’s naturally overwhelming immigration and the ‘fugies’ are thrown into violent refugee camps and deported.

Into all of this mayhem comes the Resistance who fight for the right of the fugies and they have a powerful weapon on their side: a pregnant woman who they plan to use for propaganda purposes. She escapes with the help of a cynical ex-activist and a credulous midwife who believes ‘everything happens for a reason’. When the ex-activist’s best friend is executed by the revolutionaries with a bullet in the head, he hisses at her in fury:

‘What was the fucking reason behind that then?’

‘It’s all part of a bigger plan!’ she insists, beyond all reason herself.

Children of Men doesn’t have a plot with a thousand twists or turns and even the central theme of world infertility is more or less by the way. The movie’s real power comes from examining people’s attitudes and actions in times of conflict and oppression. The violence between the state and the uprising forces is brutal, raw and utterly convincing. Similarly, the abuses of power from the guards in the refugee camps and the Machivellian logic of the revolutionaries for whom only the ‘uprising’ now matters, make a breakdown in society something to fear indeed.

Especially when you’re 25,000 feet in the sky in the middle of a storm.