This movie affected me much more than I would have thought it would. It seemed to portray a future not only plausible, but that I’ve for some time even dreaded is likely. The world splitting between organized tyranny and a counter-ideology opposed to it but ultimately offering up violence as its first principle and therefore chaos, hence playing further into the hands of the tyranny, and so the dance continues as conditions of life on Earth grow more appalling. Here the countering ideologues (the terrorists as labelled by the State) are called “the Fishes”, the utopian alternative toward which the protagonists caught in the middle move (with the baby and hope for the future) is bobbing in a boat out at sea, “The Human Project” Its vision of a wrecked future hit me in a way that Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” did, which I viewed when particularly vulnerable after Undine died. That film was largely generic and its ending was a laughable soporific, but something about the frenzied degeneration of civilization depicted there seemed real. Here, in Children of Men, it was much more precise. It may be that it felt so compelling also because of the strong thriller pace of the narrative, which nonetheless took time with details that sort of sear into your awareness–the little cats clawing on Faron’s leg in the meeting with the terrorists, for example; his never having the right shoes, stepping on sharp objects. Michael Caine’s character had something ineffably compelling about him, and that was before I subsequently learned that he was basically doing John Lennon in his 70s (had he lived, and been marginalized, and perhaps never so famous, and of course this character was a political cartoonist). The scene where the Caine’s character (Jasper?) was shot, covered in extreme long-shot POV, “pull my finger!” was one of the most moving I can remember in movies. I’m sure they shot it close-up, and that Caine was probably disappointed that didn’t make the cut, but it was surely the right decision.