I find it hard to believe that it would have been exhausted without success. It's too loose to be taken seriously.

It's science fiction. We can subscribe to more concentration camps and wasted cities, but not to the idea that a dialogue discussing the lack of success the world's best doctors have had finding a solution as too loose? It's pretty obvious that the line was placed in the script to dismiss such concerns. They've proven unsuccessful. That's it. Stories over. The film moves on.

I think Katie's come closest to hitting the nail on the head regarding Dolce's argument.

The film doesn't confront a number of things head on. It asks you to make the conclusions yourself. In the case of science not being able to come up with an alternative to women having babies (or men - your problem with this, dolce, I don't think I'll ever understand), all of the methods you've mentioned are dependent on eggs actually being able to be fertilised. In Vitro and cloning all require an egg to be fertilised. You can have a petri dish with as many eggs, and a tube with as much sperm, as you like, but if people have simply stopped being able to reproduce - if the eggs simply reject fertilisation - then the human race is doomed. Such is the scenario in Children of Men.

The film doesn't necessarily insist that women are the only way for the human race to reproduce - the implication is that the scientists have failed in every other regard. It just so happens that, by fluke/providence/whatever, a woman has been able to reproduce.

Their are signs posted throughout the film that say "avoiding fertility tests is a crime". I think it's clear that the government's far from given up. Then there's the Future Project.

The arguments are implausible. The fact that some of you are drawing your own conclusions to justify "why" things are the way they are is just baffling.

But aren't you doing the same thing? Case in point your reply to zenniers last post.

Hardly.

Yeah, no. See that single line makes me ill, and is at the root of my arguement. Thanks for proving my point.

If you guys don't want to hear it, don't listen to it. Its not like anyone here has actually paid attention to my concerns before defending the movie as beinbg totally clean on this topic. Why don't you just admit you don't care if it isn't still like the movie, and move on. But don't make modern media innocent in its advocacy of reproductive roles.

Virus affected everyone (12 Monkeys), and the point of the movie was that it was as much a product of advances in technology as technology could have been a remedy for it. Children of Men is about protecting a woman's womb for multiple reasons. Oh c'mon people, "what could be more sacred than a fertile woman?" Do you even realize what you're saying and picked up as the message from this movie? Am I talking to a wall? Those were your words, not mine, which is proof positive this movie was more nefarious than everyone here thinks, and got away with it because of its technological finesse. Shit, its like everything Mel Gibson has ever done, only worse because everyone seems to think they're being uber-liberal while supporting it, rather than just saying they found it to be a classic epic drama.

By the way, I hope the woman in the movie isn't in her first trimester, or there goes all discussion of a mass of cells not being a full human baby.

My discourse was not with the failure of science in this movie, but the failure of the director and audience not to see the fairly glaring subplot about reproduction and fertility. McCaughey septuplets anyone? Get poppin' on those fertility drugs...the future of mankind depends on your fertility! Ladies, your uteruses are shrines. Fertily, fertility, fertility! I don't know what this exactly means to homosexuals, or couples that don't choose to have kids, but there's apparently not use for them in generating hope for the future...

Anyways, the point is wew're all chosing to read this general plot differently. You guys are chosing to read it as an anti-war movie, I'm chosing to read it as an anti-war movie which gets away with commentary on reproduction I don't care to support. Since we're not talking eachother's wavelength here, we're going in circles. I'm not debating anyone's point its anti-war, but you guys seem to be doing a damn fine job not addressing my concern of its multiple, rather than singular, messages. Pat yourselves on the back for 'disproving' my concerns about the 'sacredness' of female fertility and move out to South Dakota, kay?

Dolce, i thought it was just an average thriller. Kind of stupid, but interesting. So what do I get?

I agree with everything you said though.

You know there is a Battlestar Galactica episode which mirrors this arguement very well.

I really think your reading into something that most people think isn't there Dolce. I mean its sort of like me watching Pan's Labyrinth and getting annoyed that it promotes the terrorist tactics of ETA thru its sympathetic portrayal of the Northern Spaniards in relation to the evil Madrid based General. Its a problem if you really want to look for it but most people simply believe the director wasn't thinking that way.

I'm sorry, but that comment is pulled way out of context, dolce...

I've understood what you're saying. I've processed it. And as an issue it doesn't concern me nearly as much. I didn't walk out of the movie thinking "I need to save a fetus today" and I don't think anyone did. That isn't what I meant.

**edited rest out**

Well most people would say there isn't an issue in society with natalsim either, but for some reason stem cell research support and pro-choice advocates seem to encounter tons of resistence. Just cause don't force themselves to reconsider language in popular media and discourse, doesn't mean there isn't problems with that language.



Actually, I did say the portrayels of the 'good' and 'bad' guys were too simple in that movie.


May not have been, but many things happen through lack of consciousness rather than direct intention (See Little Children). That doesn't mean they didn't happen, and it doesn't mean they are not impressing themselves on general audiences and popular discourse. "What could be more sacred than a fertile woman," my butt. Don't care if that wasn't Cuaron's intended message, it certainly was a message theatre goers picked up on none-the-less.

It's difficult to argue the finer points of this film with someone who hasn't even seen the film. I'd gladly engage you in a discourse on the movie's supposed nefarious natalist themes if you'd actually seen the film. As it is, it's like talking to a brick wall!

Hell, download it if you're so against the idea of giving them your money. Just see it! I'm downloading Black Cat, White Cat as I type this. Shouldn't that be enough?

I think this is absurd, and I have to disagree with everything you've said on this subject.


I think you are a bitch for writing that, and it reveals the real problem with your argument.

Time for a Mod to split it maybe.

It's embarrassing to me that as a fan of film you see the words "science fiction" and assume that everything can be solved by a magic pill that hasn't been invented. Children of Men tells the story of a future that is not able to invent that pill, in a predicament where humanity CANNOT escape something that's happened to it. We don't know the full story of why... this makes sense to me. Why would the characters talk about it if they ALL KNEW what happened. That would be horrible storytelling. The movie tells us of mass miscarriges and infertility, and on top of that you all dismiss the larger religious and philosophical implications that are in the movie as well. The movie is about how we've turned our back on everything and now finally science has turned its back on US.

Well you haven't even seen it, so you wouldn't know.

The film is not an anti-war piece, it's an anti-human piece. It makes a decently good case that the only hope for humanity is not the anti-war peacenicks, who go out into the woods and are helpless against the tide, or the government, who tries to keep control, but can't, or revolutionaries, who can't separate the good of humanity from their own need for "freedom". The movie makes a case that we are DOOMED and the only hope for us is that a few key people can sneak away to rebuild after everyone is dead.

The movie has a strong current of pro-choice climate. Julian makes it clear that EVERYTHING Kee decides she does FOR HERSELF. She chooses not to go with the revolutionaries and CHOOSES to go with the man who is the only one NOT telling her what to do with her baby.

Re: the debate over the plausibility of Children of Men - some personal notes (tho' it's worth pointing out that, after all, there's no accounting for taste - and you can't convince someone to like something if they just plain didn't).

Firstly, I want to address the argument that says, "Okay, let's imagine that everyone did become infertile. Well, after twenty years, scientists would have found a way round it."

That's not a given at all. Let's put this in perspective. AIDS was recognised on 5 June 1981, twenty five days before I was born (my alibi, in case you thought it was me!). Twenty five years later, according to a WHO estimate, it has killed 25 million people. We are talking one of the most destructive epidemics in written history. Scientists have had more than twenty years to do something about it, and there is still no cure or vaccine for HIV or AIDS.

Obviously, if we're talking (as the film does) about the presumed impending extinction of humanity, then the stakes and incentives are a lot higher. But let's not forget that the scientists in Children of Men would have a real disadvantage. According to the internal logic of the film, the scientific community would probably be substantially less effective than it is today. And here's why.

As far as I can tell, Britain has put up the flood barriers because (although I suppose this might be police state propaganda) the rest of the world has gone to hell in a handbag. It's isolated now. So we're not talking about the medical community of the world. The rest of the world is flooded and on fire. We're talking about the community of one country, which can't even rely on immigration to bring brilliant minds to the melting pot. Remember that Albert Einstein wasn't born in America. Immigration and international cooperation are vital to scientific endeavour, and neither are present in Children of Men.

Now, you could, quite fairly, point to real life examples where scientific collaboration was able to straddle barriers such as the Iron Curtain. That aside, I still don't find it implausible that, according to the internal logic of Children of Men, science would go tits up in the water. Maybe the white coats would save the day. But I don't think you can assume that, just because you throw thinktanks and microscopes at the problem, the human race would do a Jurassic Park and "find a way" within twenty years. I mean, what time frame would make the film plausible? Ten? Five?

The second big question is, why doesn't the film address these issues itself? Well, I think that the whole scientists-trying-to-fix-everything scenario (i.e., the why of the film, the why of mass infertility) is dealt with so lightly for two reasons. First of all, I don't think that the characters in this film would've been talking about it that much. At the start of the film, the youngest man alive is eighteen. That's eighteen years of everyone trying to work out what's going on. Frankly, I don't believe that, after eighteen years of mass infertility, your average joe would spend all his time talking about it. Once you've said everything that you can think of on the subject, and once you've repeated it to everyone that you know, a sort of general, all-consuming, unspoken despair would set in. I think that one of the film's big successes is the way in which that unspoken despair is captured. Far better than fleshing out the story with clumsy "plot exposition"-style conversations. Realistically, people just wouldn't be having them after eighteen years.

The second reason is, the main characters simply aren't scientists, and it isn't a film about science. If you forget that this was based on a novel, it's true that the basic premise of the story ("no more babies") could have been played as a science thriller. It's easy to imagine. Intense, white-coated heroes sweat over their microscopes, trying to avert the extinction of mankind. Pages and pages of pseudo-scientific dialogue could keep happy cinema-goers right in the loop. A snug little loop. As for the pace and movement of the film, it could be sort of like Outbreak, but without the virus.

The thing is, Children of Men just isn't like that, and thank god! Personally, I felt that it was analagous to (say) having a film about the War on Terror, but written from the point of view of an Afghanistani peasant. It's sometimes fractured, and rightly so; part of the film's power is the fact that the main character, the one with whom we identify most closely, simply doesn't know what's going on most of the time. Great forces, forces far bigger than him, breeze into his life and suck him away in a confusing hurricane. If it was the sort of film that spelled everything out, you wouldn't be able to identify so closely with the main character (I think).

That's my two penneth. I've said elsewhere that there were a couple of things in Children of Men that I wasn't one-hundred percent happy with, but the main premise isn't one of them.

[align=center]F I N[/align]

Dr Jam, THANK YOU for your points on the lack of scientific explanation. That's exactly what I was trying to get at in my post immediately above yours. You have done a much better job capturing my feelings about that particular topic than I did.

It's a shame that you guys aren't having this row in real life, because if you were, this is the bit where you'd stare hotly at each other and then kiss.

Holy Hell! What a Post Dr.Jam.

lol - cheers, thank you - i feel a bit bad now that the next post i did poked light fun at you and dolce vita

I'd also like to point out... re: The Human Project (excuse me if someone has mentioned).

We don't know what kind of breakthroughs this Human Project has had. They could themselves be scientists and the like that have recently discovered the cure, but have decided that for various reasons that the rest of the world has gone to hell and the only way to save humanity is to (unfortunately) purge humanity.

No, it's okay.

I love dolcevita. I consider her one of, if not the most knowledgeable person on this site. Calling her a bitch wasn't for anger, it was to let her know how far over the edge I think she's gone in her reasoning. I think dismissing everybody by basically saying that we're hicks was pretty far over the line.

I wrote it because I wanted an impact, good or bad.

No, no, I actually agree with you, I think Zennier sort of missed the point there, or he just wasn't exactly thinking of what he said. I think he's made a good point, and it was all taken a little out of context with that conclusion.

Now, like Loyal pointed out, the sudden infertility was due to men no longer producing sperm. Granted, the address it in the movie as saying that "women are suddenly infertile" as people naturally link childbirth to women, though the man does play a certain role. Anyway, I don't at all think that the point of the movie was to "protect the uterus" or the fetus in a pro-life sort of way. The woman wanted the baby throughout the film, as I said, if she had not wanted the baby, had not wanted the role which she undertook, then yes, I could see your point. If the woman had said "I don't want to be the last mother on Earth" and attempted to kill the child in some manner and then suddenly everyone rushed in to prevent it, then yes...I would see what you are saying.

But the mother was a willing mother. She, how is this some sort of "pro-men-trumping-women's-rights" movie? It just isn't. Without seeing it, I think you are reading way too deeply into it, I'm sorry to say. You know I read your reviews religiously, and I generlly think you have greater insight then a lot of people so I'm not here to attack you, but you are approaching this from the wrong view, and you are (without the proper knowledge -- aka having seen the film) attacking something and finding errors and fault that really aren't in the film.

Thank you for articulating what I was trying to say. Great post from Dr Jam as well.

It's a shame my comment was taken out of context (though I should have emphasized that I'm talking about a fictional situation where no other options exist) and dismissed.