In particular the early part, where capitalism of course has to continue but the UK’s government uses the crisis as an opportunity to do more fascism. I highly recommend you all pirate Children of Men and give it another watch. I got very different vibes watching it now then I did when it came out.
Some things that stood out to me:
The living conditions of the refugees were way too nice compared to reality’s USA, so the conditions of dystopian England would be a lot worse in reality.
England would not be the sole government that survives a major pandemic.
Pretending that England isn’t the only country that exists in this world, society would look like this if the pandemic was even slightly more deadly. The movie was way too optimistic on how we’d handle a pandemic, we know now that if people actually went infertile the western world would go full on accelerationist death cult. Not murdering people would make you a total wuss.
The movie takes place seven years from now, and everything looks like a shittier version of right now except that there’s still newspaper stands. Even though the newspaper stand exists solely to provide exposition it’s a little weird that print media is still going. Maybe it is accurate and Rupert Murdoch is a key player in the post apocalypse hellworld. Idk it just stood out.
Weird that Charlie Hunnam is in this
I watched it again last year and was disturbed by how increasingly relevant it is. Makes me think of the all the climate refugees there’s going to be this century.
I like Mark Fisher’s reading of the film as reflective of the cultural and political sterility of capitalist realism.
I rewatched it recently, and I have to agree. In some ways though the lack of smartphones and other portable government surveillance devices makes it look somewhat dated, as it came out in the 00s just before the cultural impact of the iphones and the dramatic cultural shift survillance capitalism had on the world. I wonder what it would look like if made today.
There’s also a lot of of post-7/7 bombing sentiment in the feel of the film, even riding on that deep-seated fear of islamic terror that still pervades the culture to this day.
this is one of my favorite films
