Children of Men review

sure, I'm just posing the question that 'does the analogous connection of the unexplained child birth in "Children of Men" to the "virgin birth" of christianity make the child birth in "children of men" a mystical deus ex machina?'
more specifically as a question about jaldridge's post, "...Real people deal with real problems in real ways. It's all too complicated to just be summed up by the word "mystery.""
Do unexplained events within a narative, even if they are seen as mystical to the characters within the story have to be seen as mystical by the viewer. Not to be argumentative, but I think that it's very common for the unexplained to effect real life naratives. In the case of Children of men, I didn't see the child birth as any more mystical than the lack of human procreation. I was caught up in the spectacle, the cinema. In a way, maybe that's the biggest flaw of the film (IMHO), it was a thin collection of ideas held together by a powerful spectacle.

I thought the conversation about the fact that the mother had no idea who the father of her baby was served to discourage viewing her baby as religiously significant. She talked about how the father was just another guy she'd shagged and forgotton. Thats hardly behaviour befitting a Virgin Mary.

I agree with what Peter said about the films greatest value being in the act of viewing it.

After seeing it and thinking about its ideas, i think the film works, without any particular religious or political standpoint, as a reasonably valid and interesting critique of humanity.

People often become so enamoured of their beliefs and positions that they will do terrible things to theselves just to uphold them. Childeren of men uses the "don't know what you've got till its gone" syndrome to show that just about all people, despite their differing convictions, can agree that childeren and the ability to give birth to them, are important things.

I'm not sure about the Lord of the Files comparison, I think the films suggests that people are always beastly to each other, and without the ability to procreate that behaviour would catch up very quickly.

New person here, with my two cents. I'd agree with Peter that films are experiential - they're emotional - Children of Men very much so. Yeah, it was pretty didactic, a bit heavyhanded, but it worked so well on so many levels. The birth represented hope in a world that had abandoned hope - a handy definition of hell. And rather than making me feel complacent, as Polyencephalic suggests, 'giving me renewed faith in my own world', the story seemed a clear warning that if we keep on our current path, this is what we have to look forward to. The Battersea scene made me feel guilty, as I think was the intention - maybe it was even an admonition to everyone in the audience - just by going to the cinema, we're all effetes who'd rather contemplate beauty than look at how shit everything's become.

Still, that's a beautiful point about it being an inverted Lord of the Flies - adults being beastly when there are no kids around - brilliant, hadn't thought of that at all!