Sorry to disappoint you: there isn't (and never will be) an ideal future

For a while now, everyone's been talking about the horrors happening due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been on the way for almost eighty years but, lately, it has intensified to unbearable levels. Territorial, political and religious matters burn like an unstoppable fire in Israel's heart every second, breaking out chaos and an unnecessary fight for power in which kids perish under ruble, families starve without being able to find a way out and thousands of people are compelled to think that if they don't attack, they won't survive. This is a vicious cycle with apparently one way out: death.

Everything happening around this colossal human disgrace made me want to rewatch Alfonso Cuarón's amazing masterpiece, Children of Men, which premiered 18 years ago. The movie is partially inspired by P. D. James' novel titled The Children of Men. Through this story, we witness a future in which women are no longer fertile and immigration is considered a crime in a dystopic and grayish as ever London. In this context, we meet Theodore Faron, a former activist that now works at the Ministry of Energy. Theodore—as almost everyone—is affected by the unexpected news of Diego Ricardo's death, the youngest person on Earth, who was born in 2009 and had marked, almost unintentionally, the start of the human drought.

From the beginning, a blurred line is drawn between our present and past with the evident affection that Cuarón and his team have for analogical devices. Only some digital advertisements on the streets and different visual gags allow us to comprehend that "advanced" technology that highly resembles the one in the present: a distracting and numbing tool that transports us to an ideal world in which nothing is real and everything is part of a simple and exhausting existentialist pantomime. Some people hide in refugees deep in the woods to forget that, outside, the worst miseries continue to happen. Meanwhile, other people still take part in the cyclic system that they choose to submit to daily without questioning anything—as almost everyone in the present time. Everything is done and undone by those who walk by the system's edges and, below looking out of the corners of their eyes, are the leftovers, that is, us.

In spite of its main intention of conveying a humanitarian message in an almost post-apocalyptic future, the movie feels appropriate for our time. None of the events feel external, even if we want them to. Instantly, this makes me question my role in society being an indirect witness of the horrors happening in Gaza and its surroundings. What can I do within my limits for those children who look at the cameras hoping for an ending that may never come? Where do I stand? Actually, my first thought is: Can these people stop navel-gazing? What goes through their minds when they detonate a bomb and what do they think they can get out of it? Trying to scratch through the surface and grasp the minds of these people to reveal the truth—or their truth—seems impossible to me.

"I can't really remember when I last had any hope, and I certainly can't remember when anyone else did either. Because really, since women stopped being able to have babies, what's left to hope for?"

Theodore says this quote minutes before finding out that the job Julian—his former wife and current activist comrade—suggested to him wasn't what he had in mind. Now, there's a beacon of hope among all the hate: a young immigrant called Kee—similar to the word "key", which leads me to believe she's the answer to solving the humanitarian conflict—is the first woman to get pregnant after 18 years. She must be transported to a ship called Tomorrow, located in a dangerous guerilla-controlled zone, which will take her to The Human Project, a hopeful humanitarian initiative representing the promise of a new beginning and a second chance for world peace.

Cuarón's poetic and neorealist mise-en-scène intertwines with reality as if it was a documentary shot without any anticipation. The rawness of the images stands out among other aspects since it immerses us in a cinematic experience that mimics the documentary of a future that hasn't come yet—and that we don't want to face either. The film focuses on humanity as the center of all aspects. At all times, the concept of what it truly means to be a human being as such is revealed and all the signature emotional aspects that define us are shown. Kindness, compassion, betrayal, horror... the eternal contradiction between human and inhuman.

The last 25 minutes of the movie can be described as an emotional roller coaster that shows us a colossal warlike barbarity in which it seems there's nothing happening, but, simultaneously, everything is. Firstly, a mother loses her son and cries lying on the floor holding his arms. Secondly, Theodore stands next to other immigrants to be executed but is "miraculously" saved—which anticipates the notion of miracle that is constantly present in the movie. Thirdly, endless barbaric acts are carried out until the perpetrators of the atrocities witness a revelation: like a visual symphony with its ups and downs, everyone goes silent because a new life has arrived. Kee, her daughter and Theo slowly walk between the debris while the different guerrilla factions watch them. The ship awaits them. That same ship that millions of people hold onto daily in Israeli coasts to escape a conflict they don't understand.

BY JERÓNIMO CASCO

Posted on NOVEMBER 7th, 2024, 16:00 pM | UTC-GMT -3

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