The Milieu of Resistances in “Children of Men”

While Children of Men (2006, dir. Alfonso Cuarón) does in some sense offer a peaceful, hopeful, and politically progressive message, its expression is nonetheless complicated by a utopian, transcendental vision – namely that ‘bare life’ – the ‘miracle of life’ – transcends politics and partisanship alike. This is made iconically clear in the dramatic scene where Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) disrobes, and reveals to Theo Faron (Clive Owen) that she is (’miraculously’) pregnant. Framed by rows of cows hooked-up to milking machines, she becomes, in an instant, the inviolate exception to a world that can no longer reproduce life on account of its skill at exploiting it. Thus, ‘bare life’, which here of course identifies itself (rather traditionally, ideologically) with the female pregnant form, assumes the mantle of the transcendental signifier. Neither politics nor armed resistance will rescue this world, only ‘life itself’.

The ubiquitous oppression against which this message of peace is expressed is of course the state in all its familiar manifestations (e.g. bureaucracy, workforce regulation, media control & message saturation, the various military occupations, the torture of ‘detainees’, pseudo-public executions, the incarceration of ‘illegal immigrants’, and so on.) Indeed, as a stylistic principle of sorts, the frame is regularly crammed with all the iconic references and allusions to contemporary and twentieth century horrors required to overwhelm the observer with a permanent, unfocused sense of hell on earth. Nothing escapes this overbearing visuality; detention centers are built right into public spaces, horrific things seem to carry on in the background (while passersby continue in the manner of ‘business as usual’), stray cops regularly amble past the lens, and perhaps most brutally, certain tracking shots focused on characters in the foreground are tightly choreographed to leave in its wake, and to our imagination, something awful, like an imminent execution (as when they are forced to leave behind Miriam [Pam Ferris], Kee’s midwife, in the refugee camp).

Less obvious, though just as integral to the film’s conception of the state, is its inclusion of ‘political resistance’ as a component thereof. Fanatical religious groups, militants, and political organizations casually mix memberships and bleed into one another as so many symptoms, or extensions, of the condition resisted. What would otherwise be mistaken for the Left is here presented as a collage of historical forms, each a mask or incarnation of the same frenzied, futile periphery. This is less the liberating vision of a ‘carnival’ of performances, identities, and new forms of subjectivity than its most cynical counter-image, a kind of purgatory for anachronistic factions to bitterly mix and meld. The resistance groups form a sort of desperate milieu, of insanity, disillusionment, and escape: there are the old hippies (represented by Jasper [Michael Caine]), the young Communist chic guerilla (Julian [Julianne Moore]), the IRA-esque militants (led by Luke [Chiwetel Ejiofor], with their iconic country hideout), Hamas-like martyrs, punk anarchists (one part Libertarian, two parts Mad Max, e.g. Patric [Charlie Hunnam]); but, in spite of their tactical opposition, they are each revealed, one after the other (with the exception of Julian), as secretly plotting to exploit for their own purposes the life of the newborn child. Indeed, to the extent that they are all united in this task, they acquire a deeper, almost metaphysical unity on account of it. It is an old formula. They claim to protect the child from the state, who they are sure will never let a foreign woman publicly hold the role of miracle mother, but then attempt to expedite mother and child via wheelchair to the Palestinian-esque martyr march to rally them in the midst of a ferocious battle. Luke even has long-term plans for the child: ‘he’, though Theo quickly corrects the presumption of gender, will presumably one day lead them.

Each political position blends into the other, as species of a general exploitation. History flattens, politics falls away. At one point, Theo, Kee and babe head with difficulty against the martyr march, in the opposite direction, and we are meant to feel, it seems, as though they are moving against history itself, which crawls past them in one massive photogenic rush.

Nevertheless, there is a strength in the general point to be made by the film, namely that there is only one kind of violence and whoever claims otherwise is secretly allied, through a more subtle pact, to the thing they claim to resist. But at the same time, I do not think this point can ever be made in ‘universal form’: obviously, it will always comes down to ‘how’ you say it. Which is to say, in the final analysis, the film offers what could be called a literalist view of politics: that is, instead of attempting to make visible the more subtle or less apparent workings of imperial politics in ‘daily life’, it defines as politics whatever of it is most eligible for being made visible – cops, soldiers, war, camps. Likewise, headlines, tickers, and televisions multiply everywhere in this film, but there is little to be said for the more pervasive and violent (if relatively unspectacular) apparatuses of empire, most of which belong less to the military, than to policy, less to law than to custom.

Furthermore, by deferring our greatest horrors to an imaginary future, as is proper to the apocalypse genre (though I do not think this genre is by any means categorically reductive), it buries or whisks away the extant hell of the present. To be sure, one could easily watch this film and leave with the feeling that ‘at least it’s not that bad just yet’, or, worse, conclude that the empire, the factions, the resistances are all variations of each other and so in siding with one you with them all. (In principle, the film is comparable to Citizen Ruth, which follows, to like effect, a pregnant Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) through a pro-life/pro-choice battle over her PR value. The end result is a general equalizing of positions, in the name of a force that submits ‘life’ to processes of ‘instrumentalization’ that differ only in rhetoric.) Indeed, as a Hollywood action film first and foremost, it is just as well fully available to the pleasure of those it would otherwise seem to critique. Much like the fate of Apocalypse Now, it’s not too hard to imagine the soldiers of the future screening it to get pumped-up for battle.