
“Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar - cmrdporcupine
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20161215-why-children-of-men-has-never-been-as-shocking-as-it-is-now
======
w-ll
Slightly OT but pertains to "Children of Men"

The scenes where main character Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is on the really nice
buses, and there is classical music playing in the background, while outside
the window there is so much poverty really resonated with me.

I've lived in SF going on 6 years now. My apt complex has private buses that
run from here to FDi in the morning and evening. The route sometimes changes
but a lot of the time we would go thru the heart of the TL. I'd be half asleep
comfortably siting on this Bauer's bus, usually listening to something like
Aphex Twin's Select Ambient Works, so not the classic music, but still I would
sit there in this amazingly privileged situation and look out the window to
all this poverty and despair. It constantly reminded me of this movie.

I worked at Apple for a while, and the same thing, yet instead of my apt
complex, it was dozens of Apple buses, shuttling 1000s of people for all over
the bay area, and again on the way i'd see so much that really made me think
about the current affairs of lots of things that's going crazy in our small
little part of the world.

I've since left Apple and joined to a small startup near Union Square/FDi
area. I still live in the same apt complex, and they still have the buses
running every 15-20 min in the morning, but i don't ride them any more.

I walk the 2 miles everyday to and back from work, and I love it. For so many
reasons I love it. One big reason is I don't want to be shielded or sheltered
from the real world going on around us. I don't want to deal with the shit on
the sidewalk or the craziness that exists in between my spot and my work, but
i also don't want to pretend it doesn't exist and try and ignore it.

Sometimes it can be very annoying, hell even scary. But also, A few times it's
been amazing rewarding to help someone for 5 minutes. All sorts of little
things, I've helped people that can't get their wheelchair from the street
onto the sidewalk, or helping the elderly man trying to pick up a heavy box of
fruit delivery for his corner store I walk past.

I've had to explain this to some friends that live in apt complex. They take
the bus daily and asked why I don't ride it any more, and again it all comes
back to the bus scene from Children Of Men.

~~~
lacampbell
I am curious, have you experienced poverty? I mean "first world poverty", like
the kind you bus drives through? I have, and I want nothing to do with it. I
certainly wouldn't choose to walk through it again. Have you stopped to
consider you're being a bit of a slum tourist, or maybe you have a saviour
complex?

~~~
fredsir
It would be dangerous if everybody not poor wanted nothing to do with poor
areas and poor people. All kinds of poverty counted. That is the direct route
to segregated communities and cultures of poor and rich, as seen already many
places, except that right now, in 2016, most know that there is "lesser"
communities and cultures next to theirs, having experienced them themself. If
the fortunate communities would shield themself from the "truth beyond the
wall" for a long enough time, kids would grow up only hearing tales of these
other cultures, and at last, not even hearing the tales anymore. Rich
communities - or modern, as the would be called - would be tight bound around
themself, governments would work to shield the truth from their citizens. A
future that has been depicted by many a movie, many a tv show, for many a
year.

It's horrible future, but a future to come if people dont "want nothing to do
with it", it being the very reality that they have diced a 6 on, and somebody
lesser fortunate being born beyond the wall has diced a 1 on, only guilty of
having another mother and father.

Some say it's a future only distant in the eyes of the rich. I think that is,
sadly, very much true.

~~~
sheepmullet
I don't think that's a natural outcome at all.

I think wealthy "first worlders" tend to be very "aware" of poverty and want
to make a difference despite being quite far removed from it.

On the other hand in countries with serious poverty where the middle class
live in the same communities as those in desperate poverty there is a lot less
focus and sympathy.

~~~
usrusr
That wealthy first worlder sympathy has a tendency to stop at puberty.
Everybody loves the idea of helping children in need, but once those children
grow up, it'd better be someone else's turn. It's more satisfying to help the
next batch of children, or maybe even a puppy.

Being aware of suffering in the world and living with a minimum of class
segregation are orthogonal concepts, or maybe even inversely coupled, with the
comforts of segregation helping superficial salon socialist ideas.

But the way I understand the root post (grandparent or deeper), the idea of
avoiding the segregated bus is not directly about helping, it is just a
routine reminder that the people outside the bus are persons. Maybe with their
individual flaws and imperfections, but not the fearsome mass of zombies or
orcs that they become in the eyes of those who spend too much time in
comfortable isolation. Fear is difficult to get rid of once it is there, but
it can be trivial to not allow it to start.

------
Laforet
On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle when the article mentioned that the
director deliberately avoided depiction of cellphones to avoid creating an
unintentional period piece[0].

The last movie I watched in the treatre is Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and I
distinctly remember the main character using a chronologically appropoaite
Samsung flip phone and that single prop instantly dates the movie to the first
decade of the 20th century. Just as much as Pulp Fiction is locked in the
early 90s with Vincent Vega pulling the antenna out of his Motorola brick
phone in one exaggerated motion, albeit these choices are probably
intentional.

Some long running manga series take another approach by quietly giving its
cast the latest gear despite the timeline moving at a much slower pace.[1] It
works until you start revisiting the earlier episodes and get reminded of how
old the series really is with its depiction of personal electronics.

[0]:
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnintentionalPeri...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnintentionalPeriodPiece)

[1]: [http://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/77/how-much-time-
ha...](http://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/77/how-much-time-has-passed-
in-universe-in-detective-conan)

~~~
lobster_johnson
Conversely, in William Gibson's Neuromancer, there are no cell phones, despite
being set decades into the future.

Gibson knows a thing or two about seeing their scifi becoming dated, of
course. The famous opening line, "The sky above the port was the color of
television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the
last 20 years or so (although for a number of years, many digital TVs would
display blue for missing input).

There's also some fun stuff about people physically carrying information (this
also happens in short story "Johnny Mnemonic"). For a world where there's a
highly connected, super fast worldwide computer network available, people sure
travel around a lot.

~~~
xor1
>There's also some fun stuff about people physically carrying information
(this also happens in short story "Johnny Mnemonic"). For a world where
there's a highly connected, super fast worldwide computer network available,
people sure travel around a lot.

Sneakernet isn't an irrelevant concept in any sort of context where data
transferred through a computer network can be intercepted.

~~~
vidarh
But carrying a concealed micro-sd card with encrypted data would be a lot more
convenient. Heck, you could fit many times as much data as in Johnny Mnemonic
(40GB, I think?) inside your head too by shoving a micro-sd card up your nose
or into your ear.

~~~
walrus01
Nose, ear, really?

On a more realistic note, what is the maximum microsdxc card capacity of a
human rectum?

~~~
pravda
Believe it or not, that's a thing, and it's called 'keistering'! Apparently,
pro's can get a cellphone 'keistered'. But I think the flip-phone style, not
an iPhone.

As far as microsd cards -- I think you'd be able to 'keister' many many
terabytes. They are so tiny and so thin, I'd guess hundreds would fit.

~~~
throwanem
There's a difference between "fit" and "fit without making it impossible to
walk normally". And really, you'd want some sort of carrier for the cards,
because otherwise they're likely to be lost or damaged. So it becomes a fairly
complex question of the optimal balance among total carrier volume, gait
effects, and maximizing internal volume of the carrier without thinning the
walls so much they're likely to crumple. (Metal walls might serve, but then
we're back to gait effects. _Not_ comfortable.) And once the carrier design is
in hand, there arises the question of how to maximize its bandwidth, which is
itself a rather nontrivial packing problem.

------
iiiggglll
> The one aspect of the film that doesn’t seem to be coming true is its
> central premise. The idea is that no human beings have been born in the last
> 18 years, so when Theo meets Kee, an African woman who is miraculously
> pregnant, he has to protect her from the various groups who want to exploit
> her condition. Obviously, we know that this infertility pandemic hasn’t
> happened: in Children of Men, the youngest person on the planet was born in
> 2009. But even as a concept, this particular one doesn’t resonate with our
> current anxieties, because overpopulation is more worrying than population
> decline.

It's not really about population -- it's about having _no future_ , which is
something a lot of people constantly worry about.

~~~
SmokyBourbon
The fact is overpopulation isn't an issue, it's a myth.

World population is decellerating at a rapid pace and will begin decreasing
within decades. It's painfully obvious to anybody who looks at the numbers.
But science fiction has convinced everyone otherwise.

Just look at all the countries with programs trying to entice their citizens
to start families and make babies. Governments know its going to be a
catastrophe.

Our governments spend money at a rate that only a larger population in the
future can afford to pay for. If families aren't producing above the
replacement rate, we're doomed.

~~~
lqdc13
It's not painfully obvious to UN or anyone else noteworthy.

Was it also painfully obvious that USSR was going to break up and Russia would
have stalled with population growth?
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Populati...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Population_of_former_USSR.PNG)

None of the current trends made sense 30 yrs ago. And in 30 yrs there could be
major geopolitical changes that would make current projections useless.

~~~
concinds
"Overpopulation"-hysteria is a short-sighted, semi-genocidal ideology (see:
People's Republic of China). The same people that a decade ago were worrying
about overpopulation in Germany are now clamoring for more migrants from the
Global South countries to keep up population growth ("these are our future
engineers and doctors"). Proof of how unworkable it is.

European economies would simply collapse without population growth to feed
social security. And aging populations are a ridiculously undesirable outcome
for any country

Current projections aren't useless. The higher your socioeconomic status, the
lower your fertility rate, period. The correlation couldn't be clearer.
Geopolitical events could cause temporary changes but obviously wouldn't
change the underlying trend. Bringing up the existence of Black Swans to
disprove trends is logically flawed.

So there's a clear downwards pressure on fertility rates, in the West, which
includes propaganda about "overpopulation" that obviously quite a few people
believe in, and that guides their decisions; it also includes socioeconomic
improvements. What possible trend could act as an upward pressure?

Is there anything more pathological (psychologically-speaking) than the belief
that humans are themselves a pathology

~~~
lqdc13
"The higher your socioeconomic status, the lower your fertility rate, period."

Only in a portion of Western culture that has very similar cultural and
religious values and also incidentally responsible for a relatively rich
middle class.

Counter examples:

Haredi Jews

Hong Kong

Macao

So your predictions are contingent on the assumption that the culture won't
change or that specific religions wouldn't be more prevalent.

------
walrus01
If you haven't seen this movie you absolutely should. And you need to watch it
with your face close to a 60"\+ high quality screen and with a good sound
system. Do not ruin it by watching it on a laptop or mobile device. The
extended shots create a near full immersion experience.

~~~
davis
Or just watch it on anything you can. I honestly don't think you can ruin this
film in anyway. I used to watch it on my iPod Touch.

~~~
walrus01
Better than nothing... But in its own way it really needs a high def, surround
sound experience to become fully absorbed, and your full undivided attention.
Same way if I recommend that someone watch 2001 for the first time or
Apocalypse Now Redux (the full 3 hour cut).

~~~
lhl
As an aside, for those in Los Angeles, American Cinematheque has been showing
a nearly pristine new 70mm (roadshow version) print of 2001 at the Egyptian
this month (I saw it a few weeks ago). There are screenings on the 26th and
27th.

Also, on the 30th they are screening Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm as well.
Lawrence of Arabia was filmed in 70mm 2.20:1 Super Panavision, and is IMO,
even more than 2001, worth seeing in 70mm.

------
mcphage
There's one scene in it—and I think people who have seen the movie know the
one I'm talking about—that's possibly the most powerful, intense scene I've
ever seen on screen. Absolutely worth watching.

~~~
stevens32
When they exit the building and the chaos pauses for a moment.. absolutely
breathtaking every time. It really sold that in the end everyone is on the
side of humanity, and everyone hopes for a future. They just couldn't agree on
how it should come about.

~~~
zizee
I think the grandparent was trying (rightly so) to avoid giving a spoiler by
being ambiguous. Perhaps you could put a [spoiler] prefix on you post.

------
roryisok
Whatever you might argue about it's prescience, Children of Men is one of the
best films of the last decade. The writing, directing and acting are all
stellar. It has some of the best single take shots ever filmed. There's a 20
minute running street battle at the end with tanks and explosions that is shot
in a single take.

It's also one of those rare occasions where the movie is far better than the
original book. Book is ok, film is outstanding.

~~~
pavelrub
The reasons you consider it to be such a good film probably have more to do
with cinematography than writing, acting or directing. The beautiful shots are
a direct result of Emmanuel Lubezki being the DP - the same style can be seen
in Birdman, Gravity, The Revenant, and some of Terrence Malick’s films.

~~~
roryisok
The cinematography is excellent, but the performances and writing are top
notch, even without the fancy tracking shots or singles takes. Best
performance of Clive Owens career, he's wasted in everything else. The rapport
between himself and Caine is marvellous. Ejiofor is subtly menacing, more
desperation than outright evil.

Even the smaller roles are well cast and executed. Charlie Hunnam is almost
unrecognisable as the dreadlocked villain Patric. Peter Mullan does a
fantastic turn as the brutal Syd.

The writing took the source material and squeezed far more emotion and drama
out of it than was in there. Throwaway lines hint at so much untold story.
There's a scene where Theo goes to visit his cousin to try and get travel
documents. He has Michelangelo's David in the hallway of his office, and he
talks off-handedly about "that thing in madrid was a real blow to art" or
something. There's this whole backstory in there about the UK government
trying to salvage the artworks of europe from the decay of civilisation, but
we only get a hint of it. Perfectly understated. Always stayed with me.

------
gojomo
I love this film and at a certain level, it is plausible (and even _natural_ )
that in times of existential fear, societies lash out against
outsiders/immigrants.

And yet I have economic quibbles!

In an actual fertility collapse, a highly-developed country like the UK would
have an immense surplus of infrastructure, housing, machinery, etc – _capital_
– compared to the dwindling number of new, young workers. Immigrants (of all
ages, cultures, and skill levels) could become incredibly economically
valuable. In comparison, reliable 'guard labor' to try to hunt and confine
immigrants would become very expensive.

Compare, for example, the depopulation of the 'Black Death' in Europe in the
1300's. For those who survived, wages and opportunity grew, and attempts to
enforce older rules which bound people to undesirable situations collapsed.
Wikipedia suggests that "[p]lague brought an eventual end of Serfdom in
Western Europe":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death#Impact_on_peasants)

~~~
edblarney
"societies lash out against outsiders/immigrants."

It's not as one-sided as that. Many of the immigrants in the book are
essentially 'terrorists', there was a funeral march by a group that is
essentially Hamas in the film. Hamas are point-blank terrorists, though they
are also a political group.

A 'world on fire' with millions of people flooding into the 'small, stable
area' definitely represent a threat to that stability at least on some level.

It's more nuanced take. Almost everyone is a good guy / bad guy, and there is
a lot of violence ... in that state, it's hard to have an easy moral compass.

------
vectorpush
I have to admit that the world the movie depicts does seem quite prescient
from today's perspective and the cinematography is excellent, especially those
long single-shot scenes (and that particular scene towards the end of the film
that other comments have alluded to), but I personally didn't find the movie
to be as exceptional as others seem to. In particular I felt that the plot
sort of meandered a bit throughout the middle section of the film and I also
felt that the fertility pandemic theme was somewhat underutilized as a
concept. Still, the movie is definitely worth a watch.

~~~
emmelaich
I also felt it meandered; the message was not enough to sustain the whole
movie.

It also felt a bit like '28 days'; after about half-way it went low-budget and
lost it's way story-wise.

------
the_duke
Children of Men is one of my all-time favorite movies. Top 3 I think.

If you haven't seen it, find some time over Christmas to do so. Won't exactly
get you into a holiday spirit though...

~~~
lmkg
It actually is a Christmas movie. More specifically, it's a re-telling of the
Nativity story.

~~~
user837387
How so? I've watched it several times and not sure how it relates?

~~~
vecter
The baby (or the fact that it exists and will be born) is purported to be the
savior of humanity. Sound familiar?

~~~
JonnieCache
And the scene in the barn with the animals all around, c'mon.

------
cardamomo
I've been thinking about how familiar Children of Men feels in recent months,
especially given civil war in Syria and the wave of nationalism sweeping
Western Europe and the United States. This article is a great analysis of how
the film creates this uncanny sense of familiarity. I'm overdue to watch it
again.

(On a side note, I just finished reading Octavia Butler's Parable of the
Sower, which resonantes with today's world in a similar way.)

------
m-i-l
_"...Cuarón’s most effective decision was to shoot so many scenes on the
streets of London, without adding much except graffiti, litter and all-round
squalor."_

Actually, I lived around the corner from one of the locations in the film, and
remember the film crew coming in and cleaning up the pretty disgusting real
filth (human excrement, used needles, etc.) and painting over the real
graffiti, replacing it with cleaner pretend filth (scrunched up newspapers and
the like) and safer pretend graffiti.

------
joelmichael
It says fertility isn't an issue today, but it's a little out of touch with
today's anxieties; most of Europe and Japan have such low fertility that their
native populations are in decline.

~~~
closeparen
>most of Europe and Japan have such low fertility

Their problem is not couples trying to conceive and failing, but people
choosing not to have children.

~~~
future1979
Yes .. in many cases, because they simply cannot afford to have children.

~~~
closeparen
Well, they clearly _can_ , as many more people in more deeply impoverished
parts of the world are having lots of children. Likely, they cannot afford to
have children while providing the standard of living (own bedroom, back yard,
healthy food, bonding time, good school, college education, etc) they consider
the lower bound on acceptable.

~~~
future1979
I think it is clear that this is precisely what I meant. But thanks for your
comment :)

------
bbarn
When the Zika outbreak hit, I was reminded of this movie. It's not the same
magnitude, but still.

~~~
macintux
I was surprised the article didn't mention Zika.

------
wildpeaks
Nerdwriter made a great review of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-woNlmVcdjc)

------
h4nkoslo
The little touches were the best part of the movie - the nihilist industrial
scream-metal music, the Islamic militia in the streets, the plausibly crappy
vehicles... Incredible movie.

~~~
duskwuff
Fun fact: the "Zen music" from _Children of Men_ is a track by Aphex Twin [1]
with a Creative Commons-licensed sound effect [2] dubbed over it. This got
quite a bit of attention at the time (e.g, [3]), as it was one of the first
documented instances of a major film using CC assets.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltLOrgnfW9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltLOrgnfW9w)

[2]:
[https://www.freesound.org/people/thanvannispen/sounds/9432/](https://www.freesound.org/people/thanvannispen/sounds/9432/)

[3]: [https://creativecommons.org/2007/01/17/freesound-sample-
in-c...](https://creativecommons.org/2007/01/17/freesound-sample-in-children-
of-men/)

~~~
adzm
That really was a fun fact; thanks.

------
grondilu
> But even as a concept, this particular one doesn’t resonate with our current
> anxieties, because overpopulation is more worrying than population decline.

Yet there are demographers who very much worry about it[1]. They sometimes
call it the "demographic winter".

The decrease of birth rates is already observed in most developed countries,
and it does not turn into population decline mostly because of immigration, so
this kind of reflects to what is described in the movie, even if the movie
shows an extreme version of it with a supernatural element (the sudden halt of
worldwide fertility).

1\.
[https://books.google.com/books/about/Essai_de_prospective_d%...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Essai_de_prospective_d%C3%A9mographique.html?id=ngTV_W5-UMMC)

------
ramzyo
A good reminder to watch a fantastic movie I haven't seen in a long time.

I do think the author's premise is a little shoddy though. Broad similarities
between the state of the world in 2006 when the film was made and today aren't
all that shocking. In 2006 the world was far along the path of globalization
set forth through policies developed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and
championed by essentially every US president and their allies since. The
author does allude to this when he writes "In 2006, all of this seemed
plausible enough, but perhaps a little strident, a little over-the-top." I
agree that in 2006 most (myself included) probably didn't think that
globalization would face the challenges that it does today as quickly and
dramatically as it has over the last two years. That being said, that
nationalistic and discriminatory behavior and actions can result from decades
of globalization and tolerance seems more a reflection of a natural (if not
unfortunate) pendulum swing between two approaches on opposite ends of the
spectrum. Any particular power of foresight on the part of the
screenwriters/filmmakers seems to me like a stretch, although the author seems
to insinuate this to be the case.

Maybe I'm thinking too much...the movie is really awesome and I need to watch
again.

------
madebysquares
I've got to go and re-watch this it's been a while.

------
Upvoter33
good thread. however, amazing to me that the word "woman" only occurs once in
the discussion (to date). To me, that movie is about the destruction (or
perhaps, near destruction) of the world due to the things that "men" have
created (wars, poverty, etc.), and how only perhaps a woman can save them all
from it.

------
chasingtheflow
But in Children of Men, England is the last country to keep functioning...

------
glbrew
I'd say "v for vendetta" is the closest.

