Children of Men

Late-breaking addition to the best movies of 2006. Various sources kept assuring me that I had to go see Children of Men. The problem: It was only playing in Georgetown. But I was determined. I walked to Georgetown and saw it. The matinée was weirdly well-attended since the federal government apparently gave people the day off for Gerald Ford's funeral. The results are pretty neat and the technical execution is really superb. I had a great time watching it despite not-so-promising circumstances. Unfortunately, though it didn't bother me at the time, the key developments didn't really make a great deal of sense. Spoiler-filled discussion below the fold.

There's not a single "gotcha" plot hole here, just a big string of weird choices. Choosing to keep Kee's pregnancy secret makes perfect sense if you're hoping to use her and her baby as a pawn for you anti-government political movement. Conversely, under the circumstances it makes sense that even the leader of an anti-government political movement might decide that Kee's pregnancy is more important than the movement. What really doesn't make sense, however, is to decide to entrust Kee to neither your underground political party nor the government, but instead to your ex-boyfriend who you haven't seen in over twenty years and, in turn, to a secret international scientific cabal.

Absolutely no reason is given over the course of the film to make you think that the Human Project is in any relevant respect more trustworthy than the government and there's certainly no reason given for thinking that it will in any way be more respectful of Kee as a person and a mother.

In a more nitpicky vein, combined with V for Vendetta we now have two films this year suggesting that Britain could maintain or exceed (check out the TV screens in Children of Men) current material standards of living even in the face of both a brutal internal crackdown on ethnic minorities and the near-total collapse of the world economy. Suffice it to say, things don't work like that -- it's a medium-sized island whose economy is heavily dependent on international financial services and tourism.

Comments

Didn't you just learn to ride a bike?

Posted by ogged | January 3, 2007 1:13 AM

Didn't you just learn to ride a bike?

I think "learned" would be generous: more like had some beers, felt bold enough to venture onto Catherine's bike, swerved around a bit, had more beers, got into a fake knife fight, woke up hung over, etc. Maybe I should buy a bike? They seem easier to ride than I'd anticipated.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | January 3, 2007 1:17 AM

I'm anxious to the see this film.

Children of Men is a favorite book by a favorite author (P.D. James), although it's been something like 15 years since I read it (it came out in 1992), so filling in any plot details left out by the movie is going to be difficult.

What the book did for me was to open my eyes to the reality that much of what we do as a society is for the what's to come -- the expectation that there are and will be future human generations. In the novel (not sure about the film because I haven't seen it), that's one of the things which really hits home.

The movie has a strong cast a good director. Can't wait to see it!

Posted by Matt (not MY) | January 3, 2007 1:44 AM

But digital paper aside, it really wasn't that futuristic, was it? The car's were 90s and 00s era fiats and citroens, the BBC announcers were familiar, etc. etc...
I do take MY's point, tho'--realistically things would either be much better than that or much, much worse. I still found it disturbingly compelling, tho', and the loooooong shots (in the ambushed car, running into and out of the shelled apartment building) were just amazing.

Also, I don't know if DC is the best place to learn to ride a bike in traffic. Better than NYC, maybe, but hardly a good idea actuarial-table-wise.

Posted by max | January 3, 2007 1:57 AM

You can over analize any movie.

What I liked from children was the experience of the movie- the camera, acting, scenes.

It was gripping to me that few movies per year do.
Sure, you can analize it to death, the guy from slate.com wondered what the pink floyd pig was doing outside cousins estate (obvious , cousin was collecting art objects- floyds inflatable pig was one in the future - king crimson was playing in the background).

i agree that the fishes motivations didnt make sense, except in the revolutionary PR way that was expalined.
Good film going experience.

Posted by james | January 3, 2007 1:57 AM

The knife fight was fake???

More importantly, what did you think of the political overtones of the film? Watching it I kept thinking, Brad DeLong style: "man, Alfonso Cuarón is shrill." And not necessarily ironically. In hindsight the references to Iraq and the WOT aren't that frequent and don't add up to a coherent argument, but when a film's imagery is this carefully controlled and when so much of the backstory is left completely unexplained, those few concrete details stuck out like a sore thumb.

And that Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib tableau going on in the background when they pull into the refugee camp--what's up with that?? It obviously makes no mimetic sense to have a hooded guy on a box in a poncho with wires coming from his hands at that precise moment. Is Cuarón signaling that the whole sci-fi Britain 2027 setting is a way to defamiliarize the audience so he can tell them a story about the current state of Iraq? If so, what's the meaning of the infertility metaphor?

Lastly, I have no idea why you of all people would consider the prevailing video screen technology a good proxy for "material standards of living." This is akin to the people who claim that the penetration rate of cable TV proves that today's welfare recipients have a higher standard of living than a multimillionaire in the 60s. What are they supposed to have, staticky black-and-white cathode ray tubes? Where do you suppose they would get them? Do you really think it will be cheaper in 2027 to manufacture a CRT than a flat screen? Would you rather all the computers were replaced with Apple IIe's?

Posted by Dave H | January 3, 2007 2:07 AM

To emphasise a point that Krugman used to make a great deal: international trade is important, but it isn't the end of the fricking world. UK trade is between 1/3 and 1/4 of the British GDP; let's say 1/3 to be safe. Assume that Britain were cut off from the rest of the world overnight, and lost all of that GDP without diverting the labor and stuffs that had gone into exports to some sort of domestic consumption. Further, assume that British GDP/capita grew at 2% annually for the next 25 years (to approximately the time in the movie). At that point, British GDP /capita would slightly exceed the 2006 value.

So even with dramatic assumptions, being cut off from trade wouldn't be the end of Britain. And... to nitpick... remember that in 2029, there aren't any children left to rear or educate. I imagine that would mean a greater proportion of resources left over for shiny toys.

Posted by asgasde | January 3, 2007 3:55 AM

And, as for the V for Vendetta point - that Britain could still prosper even during "a brutal internal crackdown on ethnic minorities"... I could list an awful lot of countries that prosper and grow during a crackdown on ethnic minorities. Germany. China. The Soviet Union. Or is Matt implying that the rest of the world would shun Britain in disgust at its human rights record? (hollow cynical laugh) Yes, that certainly agrees with historical experience.

Posted by ajay | January 3, 2007 5:11 AM

Wanting movie plots to meet at least a minimum standard of logic is a curse, not a gift...

Posted by alphie | January 3, 2007 5:20 AM

The point of getting Kee and her baby to the Human Project wasn't to maximize her chances of being respected, it was to solve the infertility crisis. Presumably the scientists would be able to analyze her and figure out what the problem was, or use her genetic material or some such mumbo jumbo (suspend your disbelief, it is the future after all). Neither the Fishes nor the government would or could have done that; we can assume that most of the best scientists in the relevant fields are working for the Project.

The only humanity-saving alternative, as my friend suggested, would have been for Kee to single-handedly repopulate the world.

Posted by Alexander Dietz | January 3, 2007 5:45 AM

I haven't seen Children of Men yet, so I can't read below the spoiler warning. But I already have pretty high expectations for the flick. It's definitely next on my list to see.

Posted by Petey | January 3, 2007 5:48 AM

I think a lot of countries would do better without trade than the UK. For all our national imagination about rolling green fields, I don't think there's enough food generation to keep the current population size alive. We import materials and food, and export services and money.

Posted by Bob | January 3, 2007 6:14 AM

I've read the book a number of years ago (I might even still have it kicking around somewhere) and also was perplexed by the lack of plot suspense (out of the blue someone gets pregnant and it's just assumed that whatever caused the infertility might be running its course and humankind isn't doomed afterall) but don't remember any ethnic subtext at all.

There was an ageist(sp?) subtext as old folks were herded onto barges that were sunk at sea but since old people aren't a movie-going demographic anyone cares about I can understand why that might be dropped in favor of (presumably) angry young charismatic minority figures.

I also remember realizing while reading it that the author must be a lot more socially conservative than I would have guessed from other books of hers I'd read.

I assume cornerites will be all over this as either a paen to procreation (or bemoaning the missed opportunity of same).

Posted by michael farris | January 3, 2007 6:59 AM

I assume cornerites will be all over this as either a paen to procreation (or bemoaning the missed opportunity of same).

Which is exactly what the book is. I think it's pretty much reprehensible - the idea that unless we are procreating, all our lives and work and even our sex becomes empty and meaningless. If the ultimate truth of our existence comes from procreative, heterosexual intercourse, where does everyone else fit into this world?

At the very least, it's an unabashedly heterosexist book. I hated it, with a burning passion.

I don't know what to do about Cuaron's film. I've loved everything he's done, and everyone seems to love the new film, so I'll definitely see it, but I worry. That book was a pile of conservative garbage.

Posted by DivGuy | January 3, 2007 7:35 AM

Er, DivGuy, you may have missed some recent developments, but non-straight people can want to have children - and can actually have them! - as well.

And it is probably not bigotry to write a book which assumes that the most important thing in the world is the survival of the human species.

Posted by ajay | January 3, 2007 8:02 AM

Er, DivGuy, you may have missed some recent developments, but non-straight people can want to have children - and can actually have them! - as well.

And those who can't have them, what about them? Do they not participate in the ultimate truth of humanity? And how exactly does a gay man participate in procreation as fully as another person?

If you think "the most important thing in the world is the survival of the human species", then you are hugely privileging certain lives over others - that is, those which are procreative. I think that's a really terrible idea.

The survival of the human species is important and all, but only in the service of human flourishing, certainly not as an end in itself.

Posted by DivGuy | January 3, 2007 8:10 AM

A couple quotes from Children of Men:

"Pornography and sexual violence on film, on television, in books, in life had increased and become more explicit but less and less in the West we made love and bred children"

"sex totally divorced from procreation has become almost meaninglessly acrobatic"

These, to me, exemplify the worldview of the novel. It is not merely that the raising of children is a good thing, but rather that life without procreation is meaningless - that it is procreation, and by extension heterosexual procreative intercourse, that holds ultimate meaning and affords the rest of life with the possibility of making meaning.

This is what I mean by its conservatism. I think parenting is awesome, I think the survival of the species is righteous. I just think that lives without these things, lives wihch only participate in procreation from a certain remove, are not further removed from meaning or value. That is without question the upshot of James' novel - that the meaning or value in life comes from and depends on heterosexual procreation.

Posted by DivGuy | January 3, 2007 8:19 AM

I protest to the characterization of that knife fight as "fake". You should just be glad that Tommy intervened before I took you out.

Posted by Becks | January 3, 2007 8:30 AM

The movie was senseless. To pick just the most obvious: there are no young people, but the crime rate has risen; at the deportation camp, some people are taken off the bus and terrorized, but most people are allowed to roam freely about; the population is declining, and there are no young workers to do the dirty work, but immigration is prevented.

Posted by ostap | January 3, 2007 8:44 AM

There's a crackdown on immigrants rather than ethnic minorities in Children of Men. The society is not shown to be racist in any way.

If the population is dying out, without immigration how would they refresh their dwindling labor supply? Why is the Human Project revered when they are no more tolerant of immigrants than the British state?

Fortunately, all the film's pratical and political elements are nebulous enough to be completely ignored on an intellectual level, and can be enjoyed on the purely aesthetic and (thanks to some fine acting) emotional level, at which the film triumphs unreservedly.

To take them seriously is laughable IMO. And a bit of utopianism would be nice for once. We did see some of this, with the camels and zebras roaming in the public park (the book has all the animals let out of zoos IIRC), and the guy living the good life in Battersea Power Station.

Posted by WK | January 3, 2007 8:54 AM

DivGuy, a gay man is just as able (or unable) to "have children" as a straight man; similarly for gay and straight women. All any of them require is a willing collaborator of the opposite sex. The only people actually unable to have children are those who are either too young, too old, or otherwise infertile.
And I think that James would probably argue that infertile people do, in fact, have lives that are less fulfilling and meaningful. And a lot of infertile people would agree - fertility medicine as a field of study wouldn't exist otherwise.

Posted by ajay | January 3, 2007 9:42 AM

After seeing the movie, I looked at the last page of the book in a bookstore, and it's obvious (confirmed by interviews) that the movie changed the book completely including some huge plot points. Given DivGuy's description and those quotes, I guess that's a good thing. Still I didn't much like the movie.

Posted by Matt Weiner | January 3, 2007 10:12 AM

Yeah, the film bears almost no resemblance to the novel, apart from the nugget of the story and some character names. It's worth reading the novel anyway, because James spends fully 100 pages (compared with Cuaron's 15 minutes) sketching out this bleak future, and you understand why things are so bad. The impending death of the species has thrust everyone into depression with flashes of psychosis. There are wonderfully creepy traditions people have begun to ward off the depression - for example, animals can still breed, so people illegally christen newborn kittens and cart them around in baby carriages.

In James' take the rest of the world hasn't completely collapsed (Theo, the Clive Owen character, actually takes a holiday to Europe at one point), so the economics make more sense. And if you can't figure out why this future has an imploding society and rampant crime, think of the other stories that have an apocalypse coming in 10 minutes as the earth hurtles towards the sun, or the zombies attack, or whatever. People are losing all hope and grabbing whatever they can, right? Well, same thing here, except that the end time is 50 or 60 years away, which makes it even worse.

Posted by David Weigel | January 3, 2007 10:58 AM

The following are SPOILERS for those who haven't read the book. I haven't seen the movie yet, but assuming Matt's description of it and others I have read are accurate, the following are major plot changes.

1. Theo in the book had an ex-wife, but the ex-wife had nothing to do with terrorism, politics, or the secret pregnancy and was largely forgotten by the novel's last page. They had a son who died not in an influenza pandemic, but when Theo accidentally ran him over.
2. In the book, Julian was the name of the pregnant woman, not the ex-wife.
3. Theo and Jasper were former academics. Jasper's role was extremely small.
4. Julian the pregnant woman was white, although another main character (Miriam) was black. There was some discussion of Third World immigration in the form of badly-treated foreign-born servants called "Sojourners," but there was no "brutal crackdown on ethnic minorities." Native-born blacks like Miriam were no better or worse off under the government of the Warden (the dictator's title in the book) than native-born whites. Islam was never mentioned as far as I can remember.
5. There was no large-scale terrorist movement in the book, just Julian's husband Rolf, Julian, and three of their friends. They called themselves the Five Fishes. There was no such thing as "the Human Project." Rolf had delusions of grandeur but never was able pull off much more than small-scale sabotage. On Julian's initiative Theo became a confidant of the group because he was a cousin and childhood friend of the Warden who, it was thought, could serve as an emissary to transmit their grievances to the Warden. When Julian became pregnant, and at the same time one of the Fishes was arrested and presumably executed, Theo was again contacted by the Fishes because he was an intelligent and seemingly sympathetic person who they thought could be of assistance.
6. Britain was not explicitly depicted as the only nation in good economic condition. It was said that the former Third World was generally horribly off, but the rest of the former First World was depicted as being much the same as Britian. Theo went on a vacation to Italy at one point with no ill effects.
7. The book's explicit stance on pornography and euthanasia and implicit stance on religion, abortion, sexual promiscuity, and even women's ordination was quite conservative.

Posted by James Kabala | January 3, 2007 11:10 AM

Hey, you live in my part of town! I had a house at 14th and Q NW, just around the corner from the Swedenborgian Church, in 1966 -- the year the FBI set fires (as we later found out from FOIA documents) in *both* my offices, Collegiate Press Service at 1779 Q NW and Liberation News Service at 1729 Q NW.

'Course a few things have changed in Washington since I lived there: At the time of my first tour (I worked for the Congress a few years later) they recruited all their cops in South Carolina, and it was not a safe place to have long hair. Even for white folks.

Posted by David Lloyd-Jones | January 3, 2007 11:20 AM

Everyone who's so troubled that the movie isn't realistic and doesn't hold together should spend some more time watching other movies in the pre-/post-apocolyptic dystopia genre. These movies tend to play fast and loose in this regard, something I regard as a strenth of the genre, not a weakness. All this nitpicking is really killing my buzz.

And anyway, is it really so crazy that the crime rate would have risen even without young people? We're challenged generally to explore the consequences of a world where no one has any incentive to contribute to a moral framework "for the sake of the children". Some people are taken off the bus and allowed to roam around and some people are terrorized, without any seeming reason. Isn't the same arbitrary degregation happening in Guantanamo? And are we really so surprised that in the face of a declining labor force a government would act irrationally by excluding "fugees," when right now we're throwing so much good money after bad in Iraq?

Also, I don't know why one would conclude from the movie that the Human Project was intolerant of immigrants. I guess I missed that.

As for Matt's points: perhaps Julian sensed the treachery around her and went to the outside--in fact, didn't she say as much to Theo when she explained why she went for him?

As for the paucity of information about (and lack of reason to trust) the Human Project, I took that as emblemmatic of a world where the transparency of information is, eh, lacking. Maybe they don't exist, and maybe they're the bad guys, too, but it can't be any worse than going to the government, right?

Posted by DJ Ninja | January 3, 2007 11:23 AM

Wanting movie plots to meet at least a minimum standard of logic is a curse, not a gift...

As umpty-bumpty directors have said, movies are more like music and painting than plays. Hitchcock, for example, scorned logic and plausibility and was more concerned with the costumes than the actors' performances.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 3, 2007 12:33 PM

Upstream, there's a wowzer of a false dichotomy. Valuing procreation highly doesn't eliminate other values or the value of other activities. It's a foundational act since without it there are no further moral issues, but it's hardly the only value.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | January 3, 2007 12:39 PM

To the poster (DivGuy, I believe) concerned about the heterosexism and overall conservative message of the book: the movie drops those themes entirely. Cuaron used the book's basic premise as a point of departure to comment on the West's rising xenophobia --- not to mention the Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay, and Palestine (at least those were the echoes I saw). Personally, I found it incredibly wrenching and moving, but opinions will vary. Also, one thing that hasn't really been commented on here is the technical virtuosity of the film. There are a couple of long-take sequences that put your heart in your throat because there's no cutaway to mitigate the brutality and terror. Really accomplished stuff.

Posted by klam | January 3, 2007 12:52 PM

Matthew, I hope you didn't follow Google's directions, it obviously would have been quicker for a walker to go down Florida Ave instead of down 13th street for 3 blocks. Google's directions are for cars.

Posted by miguel | January 3, 2007 1:17 PM

Not to get pedantic, but if the desired goal ("human flourishing") has as its necessary condition the "survival of the species," then, yes, logically species survival would be the superior requirement of the two.

Saying human flourishing is more important than its own precondition of species survival implicitly grants the possibility that there is a potential situation where the latter is less desirable than the former. Now, there's a number of apocalyptics out there who, assuming their own definition of what flourishing is can be stipulated to, who would agree with that statement (letting the nuclear war happen to hasten the Rapture/Twelfth Imam, etc.) but it still doesn't seem a particularly sane point of view, generally speaking.

Posted by BruceR | January 3, 2007 3:03 PM

As the products of an evolutionary process that depended on and rewarded successful procreation, it would be passing strange for procreation not to be a matter of some importance to humans (statistically speaking).

Posted by henry evans | January 3, 2007 3:08 PM

BruceR, to get pedantic back at you, I don't think that what you say is obvious. Suppose that A is necessary for B, but A without B is actually worse than no A at all. Then it seems to me that you can say that B is more important than A.

And you certainly haven't disproved what DivGuy said about flourishing, which was:

The survival of the human species is important and all, but only in the service of human flourishing, certainly not as an end in itself.

What DivGuy is saying is not that survival isn't important but that it isn't important in itself; that survival is only important as a means to flourishing. Which certainly isn't incompatible with its being a necessary means to flourishing.

Of course I and presumably also DivGuy think it would be a bad thing if no one had kids and the species died out. But as was mentioned in that thread about right-wing dystopias, dystopias are important for the values they reveal. And from DivGuy's descriptions and those hideous quotes, the novel seems like it presents its dystopia in the service of a hatefully reactionary view of sex, on which procreating the species is seen as an end in itself rather than a means to what is good about life, and thus non-procreative sex is condemned.

Posted by Matt Weiner | January 3, 2007 3:55 PM

Just to illustrate the abstract point, here's an example of what I mean about importance and necessary conditions: After the 2000 election it was important that Gore become president (since he'd won; grant me this for the sake of argument). Necessary conditions for this were, for instance, that a Tennesseean become president. But it was more important that Gore become president than that a Tennesseean become president; scenarios where a different Tennessean became president would have been very very bad indeed.

Posted by Matt Weiner | January 3, 2007 3:59 PM

It was a fun thriller, but nothing more than that. Great film? No.

It was heavy-handed in it's moralism and left nothing in subtlety.

We should be nice to each other. Violence is bad. Children are our future. Adults are corrupt and evil, even the people you think are the good guys. Fascism is bad. Closed borders and treating immigrants like human waste is not a good thing.

It's an adequate movie, nothing more. Did I get anything more out of this than I did from reading a few pages of 1984? No.

Posted by Jon | January 3, 2007 4:23 PM

"Which is exactly what the book is. I think it's pretty much reprehensible - the idea that unless we are procreating, all our lives and work and even our sex becomes empty and meaningless. If the ultimate truth of our existence comes from procreative, heterosexual intercourse, where does everyone else fit into this world?"

DivGuy, calm down. It's been a while since I read the book and not incidentally, I thought that the setup was brilliant but that the second part was a massive failure of imagination.

But you are distorting what PD James said. She wasn't speaking about *some* people who may choose not to have children, or *some* people who cannot have children. She was speaking of a species-wide inability to reproduce (for reasons that remain mysterious and therefore uncurable). Which of course represents the end of the world as we know it. Childless people can, and do, contribute to the transmission of knowledge to the next generation. But there's got to be a next generation to transmit it to.

In other words: it's about the species, not about *you* and your choices. Stop being a narcissistic dope and read the fucking text before you spout off.

Posted by jane | January 4, 2007 3:55 AM

I certainly think it would have been a great thing if Matt Weiner's parents had not procreated him. Where do dummies like Matt Weiner come from? From stupid people mindlessly fucking, and public education systems who teach idiots that they actually have worthwhile opinions when they don't.

Matt, reading your junk makes me wonder how thousands of generations of human evolution could have produced such idiocy. Have you heard of Darwin? Have you heard of reproductive fitness? Do you agree with George Bush that man is the product of intelligent design.

Go and read, The Origin of Species. But more important, just shut up. Because you are a dummy.

Posted by jane | January 4, 2007 4:01 AM

I really loved the movie (haven't read the book tho)--but it's more vignettes and overall things i took away from it--how people always help each other, how even silliness can be an act of rebellion, how it's possible to maintain dignity among chaos and hatred, and how hatred and isolation become industries in themselves. I saw the guy and the pregnant girl as being essentially carried along by people (often people they didn't even know) the whole time, like crowdsurfers in a way, rising and then falling and then rising again as some other people came and lifted them up again to continue. It's that that i took away as the main message--hope survives-- in the pregnancy and in how people can still be decent and act together.

Posted by amberglow | January 5, 2007 12:55 AM

I had one or two issues with the screenplay, and the obvious nod to Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib was way too obvious, and poorly handled.

Having said that, Best. Movie. Of. The. Year.
(And it's not even close)

Posted by Aaron | January 5, 2007 9:31 AM

First, the Julianne Moore character doesn't trust her fellow activists, so she puts the task under the supervision of her ex-husband, who she knows will put the child first (through their mutual parental experience).

Second, you're just supposed to believe in the Human Project, I think. The children's laughter at the end of the film reflects this. Cuaron consistently presents the organization in a favorable light.

Your final "nitpicky" point is quite good. Still, I believe that Children of Men is the best movie in many, many years and that it firmly places Cuaron in the the Pantheon of film directors.

Posted by Woot | January 6, 2007 3:11 AM

Lots of good tracking shots, so the movie works pretty well visually if you turn your brain off. The scenario is completely preposterous, due to handing a novel by the Tory Baroness James to a lefty Mexican director, so the politics and plot are a mishmash that make no sense. It's probably no more stupid than everybody in "Road Warrior" responding to the oil shortage by roaring around the Outback at 120 mph in souped-up vehicles, but it's certainly no smarter.

When it comes out on DVD, you can watch it with the sound off, which might be ideal. If you want to see an intelligent dystopian movie, Mike Judge's suppressed Idiocracy comes out on DVD on Jan. 9th.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 6, 2007 3:52 AM

How WTO could accepts rules limiting medicine exports to poor countries? WBR LeoP

Posted by Pharmacy | February 1, 2007 4:26 PM

"What really doesn't make sense, however, is to decide to entrust Kee to neither your underground political party nor the government, but instead to your ex-boyfriend who you haven't seen in over twenty years and, in turn, to a secret international scientific cabal."

Sorry, I'm late to this movie: But, per your objections, wasn't it the case that the Julianne Moore character told Kee to trust her ex-husband if and only if she was killed, at which point she feels (rightly as it turns out) that their shared experience of having a baby together means his judgment is to be trusted over that of her fellow anti-government revolutionaries. She obviously doesn't trust the revolutionaries to follow through with her desire to get Kee to the Human Project--with good reason, as it turns out. So her actions make sense. I think the larger point here is that the human connection, the parent connection trumps political considerations. And, per Sailer, this strikes me as neither Tory nor lefty but humanist (or, if you prefer, "humany"). And Cuaron is a great humanist director.

And, yes, relying on a semi-mythical secret scientific cabal seems risky in the extreme. But, hey, given the world of the movie, it does seem like the only semi-feasible option.

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