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comment by rob05c
rob05c  ·  3355 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Children of Men - Discussion Thread

I love the story. It’s classically mythic.

Kee is life. She is the mother-goddess. She is beautiful and fertile and the link without which the circle of life is broken.

The use of nudity and sex to enamor the audience’ libido rather than mind or heart is a pet peeve of mine. But here, it’s used well to express the story. Kee is a woman and a mother, life and life-giving.

Julian’s death is well measured. I don’t like that she dies, but as the story progresses, I realise (as does Theo) that it isn’t about their romance or sex. Rather than include a cheap love story to hold attention, the veil is ripped away and the raw story laid bare. These things are a part of life, but the whole is so much greater, and that whole is the truth which we and our hero must learn.

I was caught by Kee’s laughter when discussing Theo’s dead baby. She laughs, not because death is funny or trivial. She laughs because death is in her blind eye. She laughs because she celebrates the life when it is. Because she is life.

I like Theo’s refusal to use a gun. Numerous time he has the chance. In an American Hollywood film, he would have had one the whole time; half the deaths would have been by his hand. This is very affirming. Not everyone believes meeting force with force produces the best outcome. This makes him a different kind of hero, a new kind even. In a way, he touches the goddess, akin to the religious figures of myth. His duty as the hero is to protect life, and he cannot do so while taking it.

Marichka is the unexpected helper. Because there are always helpers. Marichka and Syd are you and I. This is our part in the story. The mundane, the ordinary human. We always have a choice: we can help the hero, we can help humanity, we can help life. Or we can help ourselves. We are faced with these choices every day. Will you help life, and give her safe passage, and stay at the dock (as you must)? Or will you hold a gun to life’s head while her naked newborn baby cries in her arms?

Which brings us to the climax. The messiah scene, the nadir, and the apotheosis: mist on the water. Where the final lesson – for us as well as Theo – awaits. It’s not about him. This knowledge enlightens him and frees us. He goes, not into the void, but into eternity. He joins the stars, and the air, and his ancestors in the great seal of humanity and, for him, heroism.

It’s not about the hero. It’s about Kee. It’s about Life.

    Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lies in them, but that what they, and all things, really are is the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord.

    Joseph Campbell