Response paper for Children of Men. Social Sciences Movie Review

Study questions.
What parallels can you draw between the conflict over immigrants in the film and the current political debate over that issue in this country?   
Does the film somehow suggest an association of infertility with capitalist excess in a globalized age?
What are the psychological consequences of women’s infertility?  What do people feel about life and the future when they know there is no human future?  What is the effect of infertility on human purpose?
Why does Theo (Clive Owen) no longer participate in political activism?  At the beginning of the film, does Theo seem to live outside ideology and refuse to go along with opinion on either side of the political spectrum?  Why is Theo skeptical of the utopian projects that struggle around him, as represented by the Fishes on the one hand and the totalitarian government on the other hand?  
Discuss Theo’s indifference and superiority and how he exhibits the contradictions he has with the social world around him.  Does the film at the beginning set up Theo as a smug, unethical, asleep-at-the-¬wheel, shell of his former self?  Does Theo ultimately take sides?  What side does he take?  Is Theo a hero?  An anti-hero?  No hero at all?
At the beginning of the film, after Theo sees co-workers distraught by the tragedy of Baby Diego’s untimely death, he pretends to be too upset to stay at work for the day, even though he views Diego as another undeserving celebrity.  Why does he pretend to be upset?
How is Theo’s humanity revealed though his reaction to injustice in the socially entangled world around him?
When Theo visits his cousin Nigel (played by Danny Huston) to seek aid in getting transit papers, he tells him that he needs the papers for a woman who wants to see her dying brother in Brighton.  Why does Theo make up this story?
Discuss Theo’s cousin Nigel, the country’s Arts Minister, whose unique character-space is defined by the safe, almost sterile, confines of the government-subsidized art facility that also serves as his apartment.  In the ultra-modern and high-security apartment that overlooks the decay of modern London, Nigel collects the last remaining Picasso and Michelangelo artworks, the wondrous signs of an earlier time.  What values does Nigel embrace?
In what way does Britain in the film remind one of Iraq or Syria today?  What are the implications for first-world Western countries if they become like war-torn Middle-east countries?  What circumstances might lead to this?  Can forces like hopeless pollution, a bitter struggle between radically conservative and leftist political groups, religious extremism, terrorist attacks, backlash against refugees and immigrants, and government-backed military attacks lead to social collapse?   
Give examples of how director Alfonso Cuarón uses his camera to present continuous, long takes and a shaky, documentary-like mobility that constantly roves the filmic mise-en¬-scene.  Is the audience aware of these extraordinarily long shots that serve as a powerful aesthetic device to heighten the realism of the film?  Or, like standard Hollywood films, does this one pay less attention to style and more to plot?     
Do you agree with the negative and skeptical argument about the film advanced by feminist scholarship that the ambiguous aesthetics of the film, dubbed “megarealist,” ultimately dehumanizes women and ethnic/racialized Others, and thus holds very little to no progressive political value?
Which is more important in this film—political philosophy or narrative (storytelling)?  Do politics derive from the knowledge (content) disclosed by the film; or are politics determined by production context, and less important than the aesthetics and storytelling of the film?
Discuss Christian symbolism in the film—especially parallels with the birth of Christ.  
Is the film conservative in that the radical group the Fishes is cast in a negative light, by killing people to achieve their aims, including their ruthless desire to hold on to Kee and her baby for their narrow political ends?
Is the film conservative in that it seems to promote a pro-life message? 
Is the film politically leftist and radical in that it implicitly takes a stand against the totalitarian government that has taken hold in Britain?  
Is the film leftist and radical in that the main characters, Theo, Jules, and Jasper (Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, and Michael Caine) seem to fall on the left of the political spectrum?  Does this really seem to be the case in the film?
Why do you think it is a Roma (gypsy) woman, Marichka, who helps save Theo and Kee by leading them to the boat?
Is Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) the real hero of the film?  What is her character like?  Her attitude toward life?  
Is Kee political?  What are the implications in her dystopian British society that the first woman to become pregnant in eighteen years is a West African immigrant?  How do the people in the film react when they see her child?  What do their reactions tell us about the ideals of the totalitarian British government on the one side and the radical ideas of the Fishes on the other?
Why does Kee tease Theo by saying that she is a virgin?  What are the implications of Kee saying that she doesn’t know the father of her child? 
When Kee takes off her clothes in a barn full of cows, is she a transcendent symbol of the mother goddess, the miracle of childbirth, nature, and fertility, or is she exploited by the filmmaker for his sensationalistic purposes?  Is the film misogynistic because Kee must rely on Theo for protection and for advice and aid when she gives birth?
In P. D. James’s novel, it is male sperm that becomes nonviable, causing the infertility pandemic.  When the film changes the cause to the infertility of women, is the filmmaker misogynist?   
What do children mean to humanity’s sense of longevity and continuity?  Does the future exist if humans won’t be around for it?
Pay attention to the background of the film.  Important things that flesh out the reality of the dystopian world of the film and the character’s lives are always happening in the background.  Give some examples. 
Be aware of references to art in the film.  Michelangelo’s David appears in the film, partly destroyed, and cousin Nigel tells Theo of Michelangelo’s Pietà, which, he says, was destroyed before he could save it.  That work, the Pietà, is the formal basis for the scene in the film showing a mother crying over her dead son on the street.  Picasso’s Guernica, itself painted as an indictment of war, is on Nigel’s wall, at one point framing Theo’s head.  It also shows a mother grieving over her dead child.  Many other references to art appear in the film.       
What kind of person is Miriam?  Is she rational, or have her ideas been shaped by fantasy, mystical belief, superstition, spiritualism, and belief in UFOs?  What does her character tell us about supposedly rational and educated people of Europe?  What are the potential political implications of her kind of beliefs?  
Is the film religious?  Is Theo a martyr and savior?
What does the ship “Tomorrow” symbolize?  What does the Human Project symbolize?
Is the filmmaker correct in assuming that infertility will lead to a dystopia?
Is the film generally supportive in a patriarchal way of men, particularly Theo, and misogynist in its characterization of women?  (Julian is killed and Kee relies on the hero, Theo, for help.)  Or is Kee, the first woman to become pregnant in eighteen years, given an exalted status, as if she were the mother of god?  
Is the film an example of “slice-of-life” realism, showing what a dystopian culture looks like?  Is it a fantasy, or a sci-fi flick?  Is it an allegory, and if so, of what is it an allegory?