Children of Men Meaning: What They Saved Instead of People

Read Time:11 Minute, 46 Second About twenty minutes into Children of Men, Theo Faron walks into a power station to ask his cousin for a favour. The cousin, Nigel, runs something the government calls the Ark of the Arts. He greets Theo beside Michelangelo’s David. The statue is missing a shin. Where the bone should be there is a piece of metal. Nigel says it like an apology: they could not save the Pietà. Then they sit down to eat under Picasso’s Guernica, which hangs behind the table like wallpaper. Out of the window, a giant inflatable pig floats between the chimneys. Theo asks, more or less, what any of it is for, when in a hundred years there will be nobody left to look at it. Nigel’s answer is honest. He just does not think about it. That scene is only a few minutes long, and it is not the one people talk about. But if you want the Children of Men meaning, it is all there. This is a film about a world that has stopped protecting people, and started protecting things.

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