Children of Men Is a Dismal Dystopia That Hopes for a Better World

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The governing principle of the apocalyptic world of Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 sci-fi parable Children of Men is simple: There are no more children. When the movie begins, the youngest person in the world, who was 18 years old, has just passed away. But from this fact other details emerge. There are cages full of people, desperate refugees from other countries who attempted to escape into Britain, now one of the only places that has held onto some semblance of order. Religious sects hold demonstrations in the street. Resistance groups are hunted by the government. We see it all as our protagonist, Theo Farron, commutes to his office job each day, with occasional respites to hang out with his weed-dealing friend Jasper.

Aspects of this world feel uncomfortably familiar and have clear contemporary allegories, but what hits hardest at the beginning of the film is the overall sense that Theo must continue to plow through the activities of mundane life while society continues to crumble around him. Of course, this doesn’t last very long, because eventually his resistance leader ex-wife Julian comes calling and demands that he participate in the plot. There’s a girl, named Kee, who needs transport papers that Julian wants Theo to acquire by appealing to his cousin, a minister. Theo agrees to Julian’s plan because of an offer of payment, or so he claims—but of course his involvement spirals into something greater. From there the world expands, demonstrating Children of Men’s ability to build a convincing, layered dystopian world that feels both unexpected and logical. That world is terrifying and full of despair.

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We see the world of Children of Men exclusively through Theo’s eyes, not in a technical first-person point of view but in the sense that our knowledge is determined by his knowledge. This is important to how the plot unfolds—for example, we don’t understand why Kee is so important until she shows Theo her pregnant stomach—but also to the vividness and realism of the setting. The sequence where Theo, Kee, and midwife and spiritual healer Miriam are taken on a bus to a nightmarish refugee camp is intentionally disorienting, with Theo and the audience taking in sight after horrific sight as Kee goes into labor. It feels like entering a nightmare, but looking away is impossible.

Theo is a simple main character who serves as the center of the film. He used to have ideals—we hear references to his past as a political activist—but when the film begins he’s focused only on survival. His disillusionment began before the infertility crisis, when he and Julian lost their young son. The lynchpin of the apocalyptic world—the absence of children—is intertwined with the most personal details of his life. The quest to bring Kee and her unborn child to safety becomes as much about redeeming himself as it is about saving the world.

But is the world of Children of Men really a world that can be saved? Is saving the world, a simplistic and grandiose formulation of the apocalyptic storyline, a useful goal in extremely dire circumstances? Kee—and her pregnancy—are a source of hope, but the extent of that hope isn’t straightforward. Maybe Kee’s pregnancy is a sign that other children are on their way. But maybe not. As Theo points out, the decay of civilization has progressed far past the problem of infertility. One baby, which the government would likely claim and control for political purposes, would not solve much. In fact, much of Children of Men is about sheltering Kee and her child from government control. If Kee represents hope, it’s a hope that must be allowed to grow beyond the reach of the current regime.

The question of saving the world lies just outside the scope of the story. What matters most is getting Kee to safety, not really because she is a definitive answer to the world’s problems but because she is a person, and if the wrong people discover a pregnant woman—and a refugee at that—she will no longer be safe. But Kee’s pregnancy also suggests that the impossible can be made possible again and that there might exist a future beyond the awful conditions of the status quo, as unimaginable as that seems. The Human Project—the mysterious group whose ship Kee needs to board—exists as a sign of that possibility, even as the hope it offers is hazy and potentially unreliable.

When Theo, Kee, and Miriam come upon an abandoned school, hope and despair collide. It’s an empty, dilapidated building full of reminders of the past. In one of the many bizarre small details that populate the film, Theo sees a deer scamper past him and disappear down one of the hallways. The sequence is Children of Men’s world-building at its best: Theo, wandering through a remnant of a past that he’s tempted to give up on, is at last confronted with the sight of Kee sitting on a swing and singing. Eventually Miriam makes the quintessential remark about a world without children’s voices. What’s striking here is how the scenery gives depth to Miriam’s comment. The paradox of a school building devoid of children feels haunting. But the voice of Kee as she sings on the swingset implies that this need not always be the case.

The ending of Children of Men is more optimistic than not, as Theo and Kee sit together on a rowboat and await the arrival of a ship called “The Tomorrow.” Theo dies from a gunshot wound inflicted in the preceding carnage, but he dies in the knowledge that he’s done everything he could to help Kee—and that she plans to name her daughter after his son. Theo doesn’t see the eventual arrival of “The Tomorrow,” but he doesn’t need to. His journey is already complete.

To call Children of Men optimistic feels wrong given the massive quantities of misery shown on screen. But its approach to dystopia is more complicated than simple despair. The world is dark enough that there is no straightforward path out, and even resistance leaders like Julian are plagued by in-fighting and betrayal from people supposedly on their side. Still, small reminders of what was and what could be are cause to believe that not all is lost.

The strongest reason for hope in Children of Men is not the arrival of “The Tomorrow,” but a sequence that occurs a bit earlier, and that relates not to the hopefully better place where Kee and her daughter are headed aboard “The Tomorrow” but to the ruined world they’re leaving behind. As Theo helps Kee escape a building in the refugee camp overtaken by conflict, the sound of Kee’s crying baby beckons in a moment of silence. The fighting stops. Theo and Kee walk through a sea of desperate people and deadly weapons that parts just for them. Eventually the fighting starts again, but the silence, punctured only by the sound of the crying child, suggests that even a world dominated by casual violence is capable of imagining a better place.